Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller

“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.

36

Head-On

He 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?”