Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller

“My phone’s been ringing all morning,” Rafferty says to Arthit.

“Oh, sure. This is news. Bangkok ’s most profligate billionaire, the guy who gold-plated his Rolls-Royce and is known not to care for farang, has suddenly given one of them the right to tell his story.”

As if on cue, the other phone begins to ring.

“There’s my public,” Rafferty says. “Do you know somebody on the Sun, a reporter called Eloise or Eleanor or something?”

“Elora?” Arthit asks. Miaow comes into the room with a can of Coke in one hand and an orange in the other and starts toward the ringing phone. Rafferty holds up a hand to stop her.

“That’s it,” he says to Arthit. “Elora.”

“Elora Weecherat,” Arthit says. “Business section. Looks like a fashion model, but she’s as tough as nails.”

Miaow tucks the orange under her chin and picks up the phone, ignoring Rafferty’s attempt to wave her off. “Yeah?” she says.

“Is she pro or con on Pan?” Rafferty asks.

“She’s got a kind of horrified fascination,” Arthit says. “Mainly because of all the girls.”

Miaow says, “He’s on the other phone. This is his daughter.”

Hearing Miaow refer to herself as his daughter makes Rafferty smile, although he knows she won’t like his smile any more than she seems to like anything else these days. “What’s she going to think when I quit?”

“Are you going to quit?”

“No,” Miaow says, in the put-upon tone Rafferty’s been hearing a lot of. “I won’t write down a number. I’m eating breakfast. Call him back.” She hangs up and takes the orange out from under her chin, and her eyes drift to the newspapers on the table.

“I thought we’d decided that last night,” Rafferty says. “I’m going to call him today and tell him I changed my mind.”

“Just checking,” Arthit says. “I didn’t know we’d come to a firm decision.”

“All this nonsense this morning has, as the British say, stiffened my resolve. I am stiffly resolved not to do it.”

Miaow nudges Rafferty’s arm. He glances up to see her finger pointed at his photo in the Sun. He nods, and Miaow tugs down the corners of her mouth and lifts her eyebrows, looking grudgingly impressed. At least, Rafferty thinks, it’s a reaction.

“Well, when you tell her you’re not going to write it,” Arthit says, “give her a reason, or she’s going to think you’ve been scared off.”

“But if Pan has given me permission to write it, why would he scare me off?”

“There are other people,” Arthit says, “lots of other people, who would much prefer that a book, especially a sympathetic book, not be written.”

“Who?”

“People who are worried about his personal power base. He’s extremely popular among the poor, especially in the northeast.”

“Why?”

“Ask someone who’s poor,” Arthit says. “Or used to be.”

Miaow is reading the story that accompanies the photograph. She gives a low whistle, which comes as a surprise. Rafferty hadn’t known she could whistle.

Watching Miaow run her finger along the lines of type, Rafferty says, “What would you do if you were in my shoes?”

“I’d take a careful look around, assess the total situation, add up the pros and cons, and then scream.”

“Thanks. How’s Noi?”

“We’ll talk about that later,” Arthit says, and hangs up.

“What is this?” Miaow asks. She is rubbing the surface of the photo with her index finger as though she expects it to come off the page.

“It’s a picture of me.”

“You look really ugly,” Miaow says, and the door to the bedroom opens and Rose comes out, wrapped in a towel and a frown, just as the phone begins to ring.

“Why is it so noisy?” she asks.

“Poke’s in the paper,” Miaow says, rotating the Sun to face Rose. Then, without another word, she turns her back on both of them and heads for the kitchen.

“What?” Rafferty says into the phone.

“Listen to me,” says a man’s voice.

“I have the phone at my ear and everything,” Rafferty says. “Just poised to listen.”

Rose says, “This is a terrible picture.”

“You will not write this book,” the man says. “If you write it, you, your wife, and your daughter will die.”

“Who is this?” Rafferty says, and the tone of his voice brings Rose’s eyes up.

“Did you hear me?” the man asks.

“I asked who you were.”

“All three of you will die,” the man says. He hangs up.

Both Rose and Miaow, who stopped at the kitchen counter, are staring at Rafferty now. He brings up the corners of his mouth, hoping it looks like a smile, and says, “I don’t think the picture’s that bad.”

10

Or What?

He’s a great man,” Rose says. She blows on her cup of Nescafe.

“Are we talking about the same guy?” Rafferty’s on his third cup of coffee, waiting for Miaow to finish getting ready for school, since he’s decided not to let her go alone today. She has grudgingly agreed to allow him to accompany her.

He eyes Rose’s cup of instant with resignation. He’s abandoned his two-year campaign to get her to give up Nescafe, the coffee she grew up on. He’s spent a fortune on exotic beans, coffeemakers, gold filter cones, and bottled water to convert her, and her dream cup of coffee still involves hot water run from the tap onto a heaping clot of brown powder.

“We’re talking about Pan,” she says. “The gold car and the girls.”

“He’s a thug. And a drunk.”

“So what? The way he acts, he knows what he’s doing. He’s like a bone in their throats.”

“Whose throats?”

“The good people,” she says, and he is taken aback at the bitterness in her voice. “The big people, the people who have everything and want more. The people who take, take, take, own, own, own. The people who go to fancy parties with blood on their hands. With their expensive cars and their big houses and their beautiful clothes and their terrible, spoiled children. The people who own the streets underneath the bars the girls work in and the rooms they sleep in when they’re finished screwing tourists. And then sell them the drugs for AIDS.” She slaps the cup down, loudly enough to straighten his spine. “You know. The people who have run everything forever.”

They are seated opposite each other at the counter that divides the kitchen from the living room. The brilliance of the new day spills into the room behind Rose, catching flyaway locks of her hair and exploding what seems like a hundred colors out of the long fall of black that stretches to the dimples at the base of her spine. He leans across and touches her wrist.

“He drives them crazy.” She turns her hand palm up and wraps her fingers around his. “He’s dirt, up from some pigshit village, and he rubs their noses in it every day of the year. He shoved his way in here, with his awful skin and his burned hands and his one low shoulder, and grabbed a place at the dinner table without being invited,