Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller

forgive.”

“Sir?” Ren’s face is running with sweat, partially from the strain of maintaining the position, but mostly from fear.

“You lost him. And while you didn’t have him in your sights, he met with that reporter. And he told her what he knew. Do you know what that did to us?”

“No, sir.”

“It took this entire operation out of bounds. This was supposed to be quick and easy. Threaten the man, set him loose, see what happens, what he finds out, and then take whatever action turned out to be necessary. Maybe nothing, maybe just give him his money and forget about him. Instead, because of you, Kai had to take definitive action tonight. He had to kill that reporter.”

“I-” Ren says, and runs out of steam.

“And he hurt his thumb. Didn’t you, Kai?”

“It’s okay,” Kai says.

“No, it’s not okay. None of it’s okay. It’s not okay that Ms. Weecherat is dead. Quite apart from the fact that she had children, and no child should lose a parent like that, it means we might have to manage the police, and that means that more people will be on the edge of our little circle. Not to mention those who have already been added. The night editor at her paper, for example.”

“He can’t-” Ren says. “He can’t know who it was who-”

“No, he can’t. And it wouldn’t affect me personally if he did. I’m not the one who’s at risk here. You are. Kai is. A couple of people just above you in the company. Lifters and door openers. But I’m supposed to protect my people, aren’t I? So your tiny, contemptible act of cowardice puts me in the position of having to behave like a common gangster. It means that Rafferty will almost certainly have to die, since he knows perfectly well that we killed the reporter. This was not the way this was supposed to work out.” His eyes go to the cigarette in Ren’s hand. “Are you planning to smoke that?”

“No, sir. I wouldn’t. It’s, um…it’s yours.”

“Well, if you’re not going to smoke it, what should you do with it?”

Ren says, “Put it out?”

The man in the robe sighs in irritation. “Of course put it out.”

“Then…” Ren says, “then I can get up?”

“No.”

Ren’s eyes dart around the room, looking for anything close at hand. “Then where should I-”

“Put it out,” the man in the blue robe says, “on your tongue.”

Miaow clutches the pen vertically in her fist, even though she has been trained at school to hold it at a slant between her fingers. Looking at the pen, upright as a flag, looking at the dimples in the brown knuckles as her fist moves across the paper, Rafferty sees hours of practice, wiped away by fear. It makes him so angry his mouth tastes of metal.

Miaow’s eyes flick back and forth between the note Rafferty wrote and the translation she is making. In English it says, They can hear everything we say. She does a final check of her looping Thai script and passes it to Rose, who scans it and shuts her eyes in an expression that looks more like irritation than fear. She opens them and points at the corners of the bedroom, jabs her finger toward the door leading to the living room and Miaow’s room, then lifts her palms in a question.

Rafferty shrugs and shakes his head: Don’t know. He mimes zipping his mouth closed and then takes the pen from Miaow and writes, We can only say things we want them to hear.

Miaow says, “Well, duh,” and then blanches and covers her mouth.

Rafferty gives her the pen, and she translates, with Rose looking over her shoulder. Even before she has finished, Rose is nodding impatiently, a gesture that means, Yeah, yeah, yeah. She takes the pen and begins to write in Thai. Rafferty hates including Miaow in this conversation, but his written Thai is rudimentary at best, and Rose can’t read English beyond “Hello” and and “I love you,” the phrases every bar girl learns to write during her first week on the job, so Miaow is irreplaceably in the middle. Her shoulders brushing against both Rose’s and Rafferty’s, Miaow follows Rose’s moving hand much as Rafferty followed hers.

The three of them huddle on the new blue bedspread Rose just bought, in a semicircle of light thrown by the lamp that stands on the bedside table. All the other lights in the apartment have been turned off. Rafferty has draped a blanket over the air conditioner in the bedroom’s only window to prevent light leaks that might be visible from the street.

He is certain that someone is down in the street.

Miaow takes the pen and paper and translates quickly: How long?

Rafferty writes, I’ll call Arthit in the morning from the hallway. He’ll send someone to find the microphones. Miaow translates, and Rose nods and writes something. Miaow, reading over her moving hand, nods in agreement and takes the pad almost before Rose finishes. When she is done, Miaow turns it to Rafferty. It says, Can we get out of here?

Rafferty shrugs again and takes the pad. He writes, They’re watching. Miaow reads it and shortcuts the process by jerking a thumb toward the glass door to the balcony and the window with the air conditioner in it and miming binoculars.

Rose surprises Rafferty by scrawling, in very large letters, a word he didn’t know she could write. The word is SHIT.

Rafferty takes the pen and turns the page over. On the clean side, he writes, I’ll move us soon. Without even showing it to Rose, Miaow grabs the paper and scribbles How? hard enough to rip the paper.

Rafferty writes, I don’t know.

25

Like He Ate a Grenade

Snarls of dust, smeared windows, grit on the linoleum, the tiny brown cylinders of mouse droppings. In the middle of the floor, a three-inch cockroach, dead and belly-up, its legs folded as precisely as scissors. The smell of damp.

Rafferty says, “It’s fine.”

“It needs cleaning,” says Rafferty’s landlady, Mrs. Song. She looks even more worried than usual.

“I’ll clean it.”

“No, no, no.” Mrs. Song pats the air in Rafferty’s direction to repel the remark. “I’ll have a crew come in.”

“Today?”

“Well,” Mrs. Song says, giving the word tragic weight. The morning light seeps through the dirty windows like sour milk. “Maybe not today,” she says.

“That’s what I thought. I’ll take care of it.”

“But you’re not moving,” Mrs. Song says. Change petrifies her. She’d probably be happiest if the building were empty and sealed. She clamps her purse firmly against her side with her upper arm as though she expects it to try to escape.

“No. I want this one and the one upstairs. Both of them.”

“But why?”

Rafferty says, “Because people can’t see through walls.”

As the elevator doors slide closed behind him, Arthit says, “Have you seen this?” A copy of the Sun is folded under his arm. He is in street clothes, since Rafferty didn’t want the people who are watching the place to see anyone in uniform. Mrs. Song, trailing anxiety like a perfume, has gone down to