The Queen of Patpong (27 page)

After a moment Arthit says, “Just stay where you are.”

Rafferty stays where he is, although he’s got misgivings. To occupy his mind, he lifts the corner of the living-room drapes once more and lets the sun in. Depressed by what he sees, he drops it again. He decides he’ll count to twenty and then go to the kitchen.

When he’s reached eight, Arthit calls, “What are you doing for the next two hours?”

“Free as a bird,” Rafferty says. “Get Rose and Miaow out of the apartment, find them a hotel, set them up, feed them. Plan the rest of my life. Other than that, nothing at all.”

“Good,” Arthit says. “Then you can give me a hand.”

“Fine. I’ll come back.”

“No. Now.” Rafferty hears the water run and then the sound of the teakettle being set on the gas stove, then the little
poof
as the gas ignites. Arthit comes in through the dining room. “We’ll drink some Nescafé, and then you can help me straighten this place up.”

“Any other time—”

“Don’t be obtuse,” Arthit says, trying to look cheerful and looking instead like someone whose smile is stuck in place and who’s panicking behind it. “You’ll bring them here.”

CURTAINS WIDE, DAYLIGHT
washing the room like water, floor wide and empty. The magazines have been stacked by size in two plumb-straight piles. Three white plastic trash bags have been stuffed with spoiled food, cartons, disposable plates and utensils, used paper towels, empty Kleenex boxes, and old newspapers. The dining-room table is bare and shining. When Rafferty aimed the spray can of wax at it and pushed the button, releasing the scent of lemon, Arthit froze in the living room, bending over the coffee table as though his back had gone out and he couldn’t straighten.

Rafferty had said, “Arthit?”

Arthit stayed where he was for a few seconds, and then he straightened, and with his back to Rafferty, he sniffled. “She loved that smell,” he said.

“I remember. I never use this stuff without thinking of this house.”

Now Arthit bends again as though to dust the table and then straightens again. “I haven’t been waxing much.”

“Gee,” Rafferty says, watching his friend’s back. “You’d never know.”

“You have such a light hand with the irony.”

“Want to do the kitchen?”

“Sure, it’ll be easy. I’ve barely used it.”

Rafferty picks up a couple of the garbage bags and throws them over one shoulder. The kitchen, located directly behind the dining room, can be reached either that way or through a hall that bypasses the guest bedroom, the bathrooms, and the room in which Arthit and Noi had slept. When Rafferty went past that room, half an hour ago, the door had been standing open, and he saw the bed, made up but wrinkled, with a little canyon on the bedspread and two dented pillows showing where his friend had been sleeping on top of the covers. Rafferty had a detailed vision, a tenth of a second long, of Arthit deciding every night not to turn the blankets down, and his breath caught in his throat.

He crosses the kitchen and opens the back door, not looking at the abandoned garden, and puts the bags outside. Arthit comes in through the hallway with the other plastic bag and a wad of damp paper towels, detours around Rafferty, and goes through the door to set them out. He straightens and stands there for a moment, hands on hips, looking at the wasteland that used to be a garden.

Rafferty runs water and passes a musty-smelling sponge under it. The kitchen, as advertised, is relatively neat, although dusty. He squeezes the extra water from the sponge and swipes it over the kitchen counters. “We’re going to need some more paper towels.”

From the doorway Arthit says, “Under the sink.”

Kneeling hurts Rafferty’s back, reminding him that he was up, sitting essentially in one position, all night long. The pain sharpens his memory of Rose’s story and brings a question to the surface. “He’s here, Horner is. He’s got to want to get to Rose, maybe all of us. Why hasn’t he done anything?”

He opens the cupboard door and settles back on his heels, his question forgotten.

“Something to think about,” Arthit says, coming in. He looks down at Rafferty, who’s staring at the space beneath the sink and says, “Shit.”

“This is impressive,” Rafferty says. He pulls out a big plastic tub piled high with empty whiskey bottles.

“You should see the ones I left in the bars,” Arthit says. He comes over to Rafferty. “Give me that.”

Rafferty slides it over to him, and Arthit picks it up with a little grunt.

“Maybe it is impressive,” he says, putting it down again and dragging it across the floor toward the back door.

Rafferty’s phone rings. He stands, fishes it out of his jeans, and says, “Ahh, my skyscraper darling.”

“We’re on the way,” Rose says. “All of us.”

“Good. We’re pretty much ready.” He thinks for a second about what she’s said, and he asks, “ ‘All’? What happened to ‘both’?”

“All,” Rose says.

Rafferty says, “Oh. Well, don’t forget the circling and double-backs and all that.”

“Thanks,” Rose says. “I never would have remembered.” She hangs up, and he folds the phone and turns to Arthit, who’s coming back in. He says, “I’m sorry about this. I think we’ve got one extra coming.”

Arthit stops, obviously processing the information, and then he tries on the smile again. It looks like he’s got gas. “No problem,” he says. “Invite everyone you know.”

Chapter 22
Generic Pictures of a White Male

P
oke asked an interesting question a while ago,” Arthit says. He’s showered and shaved and changed into a white dress shirt, tan slacks, and an awful pair of tartan plaid socks. He has a huge collection of bad socks, given to him by Noi as a birthday joke every year. “He knows where you live. He painted the door to tell you he could get to you, and then he disappeared. What’s he doing?”

“It’s only been a few days,” Rose says. “Since Saturday.” She’s sharing the couch with Miaow and Pim, whom she’s apparently adopted permanently. Pim hasn’t raised her eyes from the floor since the moment she realized she was in a cop’s house. They’ve all got glasses of iced coffee, rich with sweetened condensed milk, except for Miaow. Miaow brought two six-packs of Cokes just in case and is working on her second can.

Rafferty, framed in the sunlight that’s streaming through the front window, settles into his armchair, takes a polite sip, fights down a grimace at the sugar, and says, “You’re the only one who knows him. Is he someone who sits around and waits for things?”

“No. He decides to do something and he does it. He wants things when he wants them. He’s not careful, at least not about things that might be dangerous. He goes skydiving, he climbs rocks. And look at the way he came back into the Candy Cane to get me so soon after he took Oom. That wasn’t careful.”

“It was impulsive,” Arthit says. “But if he’s impulsive, why hasn’t he tried to get to you? He had that guy, that guy—”

“John,” Rafferty says.

“John. He had John following Poke—and maybe you, for all we know—just getting information. But he already knew where you lived. He and John, the two of them, could have waltzed into that apartment in the middle of any night of the week and done whatever they wanted.”

“Not to be immodest, but I was there,” Rafferty says.

“These guys aren’t going to worry about a travel writer,” Arthit says.

“Well,” Rafferty says, “I’m not
just
a travel writer.”

“Of course not.” Rose passes her fingertips over the condensation on the side of her glass and pats the side of her neck with the cool water. In Thai she says, “But they have no way of knowing how lethal you are.”

“You think he’s a soldier,” Arthit says to Rose, ignoring Rafferty. “But his visas say ‘businessman.’ And what kind of soldier gets so much time off?”

“He’s a soldier,” Rose says.

“Jesus, we’re slow,” Rafferty says. “He’s both. He’s a mercenary.”

“The talon,” Arthit says, sitting up. “I knew I’d seen it before. He’s Grayhawk.”

“They’re both Grayhawk,” Rafferty says.

Rose says, “What’s Grayhawk?”

“Contractors,” Rafferty says. “Hired guns. The guys who kill people on behalf of the Land of the Free when a war is unpopular and the president doesn’t want military casualties. The guys who shot a lot of those folks in Iraq and are shooting folks now wherever freedom is threatened.”

“That’s a cynical attitude,” Arthit says.

“Well, excuse me,” Rafferty says. “And not to digress from the matter at hand, but I think all the world’s professional politicians, every single one of them, should be herded together and imprisoned permanently beneath a giant glass bell jar and fed a diet of issues and causes. We could use the gas they generate as an energy source. Enough to light whole cities.”

Arthit says, “That’s hardly a digression at all.”

“I just thought we should get it on the table.”

“Grayhawk guys are not tabby cats,” Arthit says.

“Howard is very dangerous,” Rose says.

“Old John let me stick chili up his nose pretty easily,” Rafferty says.

Pim says, “I was there. You were lucky.”

“Yeah,” Rafferty says. “I was.” To Arthit he says, “Where do we start to look for him?”

“What hotel did he stay at?” Arthit asks Rose.

“The Royal Orchid. Always, at least when he was with me.”

Arthit asks Rafferty, “Sound like a starting point? Not that he’s likely to use the same hotel much.”

“I’ll check it out—”

“No you won’t,” Arthit says. His cell phone rings. “Yes?” He glances over at Rafferty and nods. “Thanks, e-mail it and we’ll take a look. When will you guys be here?” He glances at his watch and says to Miaow, “What time is your rehearsal?”

Miaow’s eyebrows go up in surprise. “Two. It starts in sixth period.”

“One-thirty,” Arthit says into the phone. “See you then.” He disconnects and says, “Come with me, Rose.”

Rafferty says to his receding back, “What do you mean, I won’t check it out? Who will?”

Rose gets up and follows Arthit into the dining room with Rafferty trailing along behind, his question unanswered. Arthit lifts the lid on a laptop that’s sitting on the dining-room table and brings up Gmail. At the top of the messages in his in-box is one with the subject heading
HORNER
. Arthit opens it and clicks on the first attachment.

A fuzzy, low-res black-and-white picture of Howard Horner fills the screen. He’s got glasses on, and he’s puffed out his cheeks with just enough air to change the shape of his face. He’s also tilted his head back so the glasses are bouncing light into the camera lens, making his eyes invisible.

“That’s not him. Is it?” Miaow asks from behind them.

“Exactly,” Arthit says. He flicks through the other attachments. There are six of them in all, generic pictures of a white male in his early thirties. Beards and mustaches come and go, as do a couple of wigs and several pairs of glasses. “He’s good at this.”

“No one will recognize him from these,” Rose says, and then she straightens and says, “Oh.”

Rafferty says, “Oh?”

“We need to go back in the other room and sit down.”

Arthit says, “If you say so,” and he gets up, and they all follow Rose.

“Give me a second,” she says, sitting back down on the couch. She picks up her glass of iced coffee and drains it, then closes her eyes for a second, and then she says, “He’s got another one.”

“Another girl,” Rafferty says.

“Sure. That’s why he was in Patpong the night we saw him in the restaurant. That’s why he’s leaving me alone right now. He does one thing at a time. He gives it—he gave
me
—all his attention. He’s working on some girl right now. When he’s finished with her, or when there’s a natural break in the, the
courtship,
he’ll get around to me.”

“A girl in Patpong,” Arthit says. “How many years has it been?’

Rose slides her fingertips around through the coating on the inside of her empty glass and then licks them. “He took me in 1998, 1999. He spent months with me, off and on, until he took me to Phuket. So eleven years, twelve years.”

“Probably feels safe to him again by now,” Rafferty says. “People have forgotten him. Lots of girls have quit, new girls everywhere.”

“He likes newer girls,” Rose says, with an involuntary glance at Pim. “They’re dumber.”

“This turns things around,” Rafferty says.

Arthit says, “Not with what we just got.”

Rose says, “What turns what around? And what did we just get? I hate it when you two do that.”

“He doesn’t know where you are, right now,” Rafferty says, “but we know where he is, or at least where he’s going to be. In Patpong, working on some girl. But we don’t have a good—”

“Thirty bars,” Arthit interrupts. “Five thousand
farang
men on any given night. We need a much better picture.”

Rose says, “That’s the other part of ‘Oh.’ I think I’ve got one.”

“You kept his
picture
?” Miaow says in disbelief.

“I forgot,” Rose says. “In the suitcase I took on the boat, I had a little camera, one of the old ones you use once and then throw away. I bought it for the trip and never touched it again. If the film is still any good, there are ten or fifteen pictures of Howard in it.”

“Where?” Rafferty asks.

“In a cardboard box with a lot of things I never use, on the top shelf of the closet.” She closes her eyes and says, “On the right. Behind the iron and that machine you bought to write down all the things you said into the tape recorder you were going to use for your writing.”

“The transcription machine.” Another burst of enthusiasm gathering dust.

“That. Behind that.”

“One of those little cardboard cameras? Yellow or something?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll have it developed,” Arthit says. “When Poke comes back from Miaow’s rehearsal, he can stop at the apartment and get it, and give it to Kosit.”

Rafferty says, “Kosit?”

“You remember Kosit. Older cop, leathery face, got—”

“I remember Kosit. Why will Kosit be at my—”

Arthit waves him off. “Because he’s going with you. Also, a kid named Anand. Patrolman on his way up, if I have anything to say about it. He’s the one—I think I told you about this—who gave me the money when all the other cops were looking for me. He found me trapped at the top of a flight of stairs in an apartment building, threw me all the money he had, and went down to tell his sergeant that nobody was up there.” He swallows, cups his hands, and rubs his face with them. “That was the night Noi died.”

Rafferty lets a few seconds creep by and says, “Arthit. You can’t just assign cops to us like we’re visiting Saudis.”

“They’re on special assignment,” Arthit says. “To the national hero.”

“Boy, are you squeezing that.”

“Why not? It’s not going to last forever. As soon as Thanom can stuff me into a box and nail the lid shut, he will. He hates that I get all the attention, even if he does jam himself into every picture.” Thanom, Arthit’s boss, is a guaranteed first-ballot occupant of the Police Corruption Hall of Fame, and Arthit has been a stone in his shoe for years. “Kosit and Anand will check the Royal Orchid,” Arthit continues. “And they’ll be wherever Miaow is. When you’re with her, they’ll stay out of sight on the assumption they’ll be able to spot the watchers and get in the middle if anything happens. When you’re not with her, they’ll be visible, so nothing
does
happen.”

“What about Rose?” Rafferty asks.

Arthit says, “Rose isn’t going anywhere.”

Rose says, “Excuse me?”

“Good,” Rafferty says to Arthit. “
You
keep her in line. And call me once in a while to let me know how you’re doing.” He checks his watch and stands up. “If he’s really found a new one, and if we can get a good picture, we might be able to turn this whole thing around.”

Arthit says, “Maybe.”

“Before he finishes with the girl,” Rose says.