Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller

“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?”