Breathing Water (23 page)

T
he envelope says, DON’T COME IN. CALL A FRIEND.

It sits, meticulously centered, on the coffee table in front of the couch in Arthit’s living room. It is the only thing on the table. The characters are written in thick black felt-tip. Noi’s usual handwriting was slapdash, the lines of text slanting up to the right in a way that Arthit always saw as optimistic. But these words are ruler-straight and meticulously formed. The kind of care she would take with the last thing she would ever do.

Where did she sit to write it?
he asks himself, and immediately knows the answer: the kitchen table. There had been a half-drunk cup of tea on the table. He’d seen it before his foot slipped.

“Can I get you anything?” Kosit asks.

Sitting in the center of the couch, Arthit shakes his head. He says, “She didn’t finish her tea.”

Kosit blinks and says, “I hadn’t noticed that.”

“She was in a hurry,” Arthit says. “She wanted to make sure.”

“Sure?”

“That I didn’t come home too early. That the…that the pills had
time to work.” He can’t find the voice to continue, so he clears his throat and looks back down at the envelope. He hasn’t opened it yet. He’s not sure he’ll ever be able to open it.

The front door stands wide open, and an ambulance’s red lights blink on-off-on through the window. A few people have gathered curiously on the sidewalk. Arthit can hear the medical technicians talking in the bedroom. When they wheel Noi out, it will be the last time she ever leaves the house. Their house.

Of course he
had
gone in.

After all, he’d come home early. She might still have been…

“A glass of water,” he says. His voice is husky.

“Sure,” Kosit says. He gets up but stops as two uniformed patrolmen come in. “What?” he asks. “Why are you here?”

“We got called. Fatality, right?” The senior patrolman is in his early fifties, nut brown. He’s got a nose as bulbous as a head of garlic, the skin covering it a miniature map of broken veins. Beneath a flop of dirty hair are tiny eyes, the whites a disconcertingly sweet pink. His younger partner looks embarrassed, his eyes fixed on the carpet.

“Suicide,” Kosit says. “The survivor is a cop. You’re not needed.”

“We got a call,” says the senior patrolman. “From headquarters.”

“It’s a mistake,” Kosit says. “Go away.”

“From whom?” Arthit asks.

“Excuse me?” The senior patrolman scratches the back of his neck, revealing a dark, damp circle under his right arm.

Arthit says, “I asked who put out the call.”

“You’re the husband, right?” says the senior patrolman. He waits for an answer, letting the silence yawn between them.

“I am,” Arthit says at last.

“Yeah, well, then, I don’t see that you need to know who put out the call.” His partner shifts his gaze from the carpet to the tops of his own shoes.

“You’re being offensive,” Kosit says. “This man is a lieutenant colonel on the force. We have a note, in the handwriting of the deceased.”

“Where?” asks the senior patrolman. He takes two more steps into the room, claiming it as his own.

“It’s—” Kosit says, glancing down. The coffee table is bare. “It’s in the…um, kitchen,” he says.

“We’ll need it to take it,” says the senior patrolman. “And, sir,” he says to Arthit, “we’ll need your weapon.”

Arthit says, “What’s your name?”

“And where’s your name plate?” Kosit demands.

“In the car.” The senior patrolman rests his hand on the butt of his automatic. “I want the weapon, sir. Now.”

“
Why
is your name plate in the car? And him”—he lifts his chin at the embarrassed partner—“did he forget his, too?”

“For the third time,” the patrolman says, “I want your weapon.”

“I’ll have to get it,” Arthit says, standing up. He goes toward the dining room, then stops and says over his shoulder, “Surely you’re not going to let me go alone. How do you know I’m not going to come back shooting?”

“Go with him,” the senior patrolman says to his partner, who swallows convulsively at the prospect.

“I’ll go,” Kosit says. “This man’s rank deserves that kind of respect.”

The wheels of the gurney squeal from the hallway. Arthit forces himself not to turn to look, but the senior patrolman’s eyes flick toward the noise, and he watches with some curiosity. “Go,” he says.

Arthit leads Kosit through the dining room, listening to Noi’s progress down the hall on the other side of the house. “This is about taking me off the board,” he says very softly to Kosit when they’re crossing the breakfast nook. “It’s about the thing Poke’s involved in, the thing with Pan.”

“Who put out the call?” Kosit says.

“Thanom. He’s probably the guy who scrubbed Pan’s records.”

“That tapeworm. What can I do?”

“Give me your money.”

Kosit pats his pockets, locates a wad of bills folded so tightly they look like they’ve been ironed, and passes them to Arthit. Arthit pulls out his own money, puts the two stashes together, and slips them back in his pocket.

By now they are in the kitchen. Moving quickly, Arthit goes to the kitchen table, the table where he and Noi ate breakfast only that morning, where she rested her head on his shoulder, the table where they’d eaten all their meals since it became more difficult for her to carry the food even as far as the breakfast nook. The table where she probably wrote the note.

Next to the half-empty teacup, on which he now sees a pale lipstick print that stabs him through the center of his heart, are the gun belt and holster. Arthit pulls the automatic free and lets the belt and holster fall to the floor. He stares down at the gun in his hand long enough to make Kosit put a hand on his arm.

Arthit looks up. “Count to thirty,” he says. “Then knock over the table and call for help.”

“Got it.”

Arthit opens the back door. “I’ll call you after I buy a new phone. They’ll be looking out for calls from this one.” He takes his phone out of his pocket and hands it to Kosit. The two men regard each other for a long, silent moment.

“I’m counting,” Kosit says. “One…”

Arthit takes one last look at Noi’s kitchen. Then he says, “Thanks. I won’t forget this.” A moment later he’s out the door and into the dark, wet warmth of the night, the gun cold and reassuringly solid in his hand.

H
e should have accepted the painkillers Dr. Pumchang offered.

If he bends his elbow sharply and holds the taped hand against his chest at about heart level, the throbbing subsides to a point at which it’s just a hairsbreadth on the wrong side of unbearable. He cradles the left wrist in his right hand, with the result that he has no hands free. It’s getting dark, but the sidewalks are still crowded, and he negotiates his way through the oncoming crowd, hands clasped to the center of his chest like someone who is about to open them to sing, his elbows pointed out in front of him to keep anyone from blundering into the rigid, swollen, white-wrapped rectangle that used to be his left hand.

His cell phone rings, and he lets go of the bad hand long enough to bring the phone’s display into his field of vision. Arthit’s number again. He’ll have to answer sooner or later, but right now he hasn’t got the courage to find out what’s happened. Not that a cop will tell him. But why doesn’t Arthit have his phone? He’ll face it when he gets home.

Rafferty is a city boy by choice, and this is normally the hour he likes best, when the day shrugs its shoulders and allows the night to slip back
in, when Bangkok goes through four or five kinds of light in an hour. The show begins with the gradual softening of dusk, the buildings’ windows growing brighter and their edges sharper against the darkening sky as the first bats flap raggedly across it, and finishes with the sidewalks chalky with the spill of light from stores and restaurants and bars, and the bluish electric snap from the buzzing streetlights high overhead. He’s often thought that Tolouse-Lautrec would have loved it.

But tonight it seems hellish and sulfurous, as though the world were lighted by Lautrec’s gas-lamp footlights, turning faces into irregular expressionistic assemblages of light and shadow, concealing eyes and washing the color out of clothes. Making it harder to spot Yellow Shirt or any other extra, unwanted wheels he might be hauling along. Rafferty is keenly aware that he’s the next thing to helpless—he’d do anything to prevent a blow to his hand—and the anxiety makes him scan the faces around him with an added degree of intensity.

Which is how he spots the girl.

As he nears the turn that will take him to his apartment, he becomes aware that the makeup of the crowd on the sidewalk has changed. There are more children than he is used to seeing, street children by the look of them, feral and filthy-faced and wearing dirty, ill-matched clothing. They weave in and out among the larger figures, sometimes passing him in the direction in which he is going, sometimes coming at him head-on. He notices one girl, perhaps twelve or thirteen, who has a tangle of wild hair above a scar that slashes diagonally down her forehead through her left eyebrow, mercifully skips the eye, and begins again as a furrow plowed into her smooth cheek. He watches her in profile as she overtakes him and disappears into the throng. Four or five minutes later, he sees her coming toward him.

Okay. Not random.

The girl doesn’t glance at him, doesn’t even seem to feel his eyes on her, but he knows she has registered his gaze, sees it in the almost undetectable increase in the speed at which she walks, in the sharper downward tilt of her head. Clutching the injured hand against his chest, he works his way over to a shop window and backs up until his shoulders touch the glass. Whatever is coming, it will at least have to come head-on.

And then, of course, he knows what it is that’s coming.

He is already looking for the boy by the time the familiar face appears down the street, moving along at precisely the pace of the crowd, angling slowly toward the window where Rafferty waits, feeling his heart thrum in the vein at his throat and wondering how in the world he can factor
this
into his life right now. And then he realizes that whatever the boy wants, it would not be good for whoever is tailing him to see the connection between them, so he pulls the bandaged hand away from his chest and uses his right to hike the sleeve above the adhesive tape so he can check his watch. He does his best to register impatience and scan the crowd like someone who’s being stood up, and then he turns and moves with the flow, but more slowly, keeping the buildings at his left shoulder.

The boy moves beside him without a glance. He has a hand on the arm of a young woman—a girl, really—who holds a baby. Neither of them seems to notice Rafferty, but the boy, without turning his head, says, “You’re being followed.”

Lowering his gaze to look at his watch again, Rafferty says, “How many, and what color shirt?”

“One. Blue. Can I get rid of him?”

“Don’t hurt him. I’m in enough trouble already. Nobody in yellow?”

“Not for the last three blocks anyway.”

“Let’s lose him.”

The boy shrugs assent and moves on. The girl beside him risks one short look at Rafferty, then snaps her head forward again, but not before her eyes slide down to the white-wrapped hand. She tosses a quick, puzzled smile and hurries on beside the boy, putting her free hand on his arm in a way that makes Rafferty think,
Hmmmm
, even under these circumstances.

A broad incline of steps opens up to Rafferty’s left, rising to a complex of shops and restaurants that’s anchored by an enormous and brilliantly lit McDonald’s, in front of which Ronald offers the passing crowd a permanent plastic
wai
, hands palm to palm against his chest in greeting. Halfway up the steps, Rafferty turns idly and surveys the crowd, still trying to look like the man whose date hasn’t shown.

His phone rings again, and again it’s Arthit’s number.

The sidewalk teems with people: those who left work late, those who are starting the evening early, those who are squeezing in some
last-minute shopping, those who just want to move around now that the day’s heat is lifting, those whose fingers are happiest in other people’s pockets, those who are always on the street. Rafferty’s attention is drawn by a shout and a sudden knot of people on the sidewalk, a little eddy like a whirlpool twelve or fifteen feet away. Another shout, a curse this time, and the knot dissolves, and three children streak for the curb. One of them holds a wallet straight up in the air like the Olympic torch. The children pause in the parking lane, tossing the wallet back and forth, and then there’s an eruption of people, shoved forward from behind, and the children take off, heading back down Silom, away from Rafferty, with Blue Shirt in pursuit, screaming after them and stretching his arms in front of him as he runs, as though they were as elastic as chewing gum and he could suddenly extend them and snag the nearest kid.

“Now,” the boy says, suddenly beside him. “Down, into the crowd, and around the corner. We’ll be there.” He descends a step and then turns back and says, “If you’ll talk to me, I mean.” Then he hops lightly down the stairs and melts into the crowd, and Rafferty, feeling old and fragile by contrast, pulls out his cell phone and, with some difficulty, opens it, then presses and holds the 1 key to speed-dial Rose. By the time she answers, he is already at the foot of the steps, pressing the bad hand to his chest.

“Rose,” he says. “Get Miaow and leave the apartment.” He finds an entry point in the crowd and steers himself into the stream of people. “No, nothing’s wrong. I just need you to get your two watchers out of the way. I want to get into the building without being seen. Tell Miaow you’ll buy her an ice cream or something. Call me when you know you’re being followed.” He folds the phone against his chin and drops it into his shirt pocket, then grabs his left wrist again as the hand seems to balloon with pain.

Five minutes later, standing on the side street with the boy and the young woman looking at him expectantly, he answers the phone, and Rose says, “The apartment’s clear. They’re behind us.”

“THERE ARE TWENTY-FOUR
right now,” Boo says. He reaches up to the wall behind him and rubs the hanging blanket between his thumb and
forefinger as though he’s thinking about buying it. “Sometimes there are more, sometimes not so many.”

“Twenty-six,” says the girl, who has been introduced as Da. “If you count us.”

“Twenty-five and a half,” Boo says, and Da grins, and Rafferty has to tighten his jaw to keep it from dropping. The kid made a
joke
? In the old days, a little less than two years ago when the boy—then known by his street name, Superman—first barged into their lives—he’d rarely smiled at anything lighter than a five-act tragedy.

“Excuse me,” Da says politely. “Why is your hand like that?”

“I don’t want to forget my Carpenters CD,” Rafferty says. “This way I never do.”

“But—” Da says, looking puzzled.

The boy says, “Don’t joke with her. She believes everything.”

And Rafferty watches in amazement as the girl takes one hand off the baby and swats Superman—
Boo
—across the head.

“But you can’t
play
it,” Da says, glaring at the boy, who’s cringing in mock terror, “if it’s all taped up like that.”

“This is my contribution to the evening, wherever I go,” Rafferty says. “Making sure that there’s at least one Carpenters CD that nobody can play.”

“Who stomped on your hand?” Boo asks.

“Someone you’ll never have to meet.”

The boy shrugs without much interest and looks around. Despite Rafferty’s efforts, the apartment on the fourth floor is dingy and cheerless. Through a six-inch gap between the sheets and pillowcases he hung over the windows, he can see wet-looking streaks of whatever the hell is left on glass after it’s been badly washed.

“Why are we here?” Boo asks. “Where’s Miaow?”

“We’re here because we can’t go upstairs for a bunch of reasons,” Rafferty says, “and Miaow is out right now with Rose.”

“What reasons?” the boy asks.

The girl asks, “Who’s Miaow?”

“My daughter,” Rafferty says, and suddenly an idea breaks over him like a wave. It’s enough to make him sit forward and forget about the hand for a moment. “Twenty-four kids? You’ve got twenty-four kids?”

“Give or take,” Boo says.

Da says, “How old is Miaow?”

“Then you can help me,” Rafferty says, closing his eyes. He’s been in another poker game for the past few days, he realizes, playing against pros this time, and he’s suddenly been dealt a hand full of wild cards. He’s already seeing it in his mind, setting up the bluff, figuring out what he’ll need.

“Good,” Boo says, settling into his uncomfortable chair, “because we need you to help us, too.”

Da says again, “How old is—” but the boy cuts her off with a glance.

“WHERE ARE YOU?”
demands Captain Teeth.

“Outside the apartment,” says the man who had been watching Rafferty. “I only lost him for five or ten minutes this time.”

Captain Teeth rests his forehead in his hand. “What do you mean,
this
time?”

“He went into a building an hour or so ago. He must have come out the back way or something, because I was out front the whole time. I picked him up about half an hour later, and he’d hurt his hand somehow. He went into another building and got it bandaged, and then…well, then—”

“Kid stole your wallet.” Captain Teeth turns up the volume on the console. He has one earpiece of his headphone still in place, and the cell phone pressed to his other ear. Rafferty’s apartment is silent.

“Three of the little bastards. But I got it back.”

“I don’t give a shit about your wallet. You shouldn’t have chased them.”

“It was my
wallet
.”

“Oh, golly,” Captain Teeth says, listening to the silence in Rafferty’s living room. “A few baht, some fake ID, maybe a condom. No wonder they tossed it.”

“They got eight hundred baht.”

“You’d already lost him once, you idiot. You should have stayed with him.”

“Okay.” When Captain Teeth doesn’t say anything, the man adds, “Sorry.”

“Any chance it was a setup?”

“You mean, do I think he’s running a ring of homeless kids? No. The sidewalk was full of them. Must have been twenty.”

Captain Teeth says, “Is that normal?”

“No,” the man says grudgingly, “but come on. They move around. If they didn’t, everybody’d be on the lookout all the time.”

“What about the hand?”

“I don’t know. Maybe cut, maybe broken. All wrapped up in bandages.”

“Any lights on in the apartment right now?”

The man on the street counts balconies and corner windows until he gets to Rafferty’s floor. “The one in the living room.”

“Well, I can’t hear him.”

“Are the woman and the girl in there? I don’t see the guys who follow them.”

“No,” Captain Teeth says. “They went out ten, fifteen minutes ago. The guys are behind them.”

“So,” the man on the street says, “what’s the problem? There’s no one for him to talk to.”

“The woman got a phone call just before they went out,” Captain Teeth says. “And what it all adds up to is that we don’t really know where Rafferty is, and the building went for ten minutes or so with nobody watching it.” He sits back in his chair and takes the nail of his uninjured thumb between his straggling incisors.

The man on the other end of the phone says, “Kai?”

Captain Teeth—Kai—says, “I’m thinking.” The door to the office opens, and Ren comes in, looking sleepy. He’s breathing through his mouth to cool the burned spot on his tongue. He looks at Kai, with the phone to one ear, and raises his eyebrows questioningly.

“Go inside,” Kai says into the phone.

“And do what? Knock on his door?”

“Yes.”

“He’s
in
there, I’m telling you.”

“Based on what?” Kai hears something in his other ear. “Hold on,” he says. To Ren he says, “Grab the headphones.”

Ren pulls out his chair, sits, and clamps the phones to his ears. Together the two of them listen to a ringing telephone in Rafferty’s apartment.

Ren looks over at Kai and says, “So?”

“So some kids picked Dit’s pocket, and Dit chased them and lost Rafferty, and the other two followed the woman and the girl out of the apartment, and now it’s Dit’s best guess that Rafferty’s at home.”