Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller

another blackened object across the floor, the dog following happily along. This time Boo sees the things for what they are.

They’re sewing machines.

For a frozen, gelid moment that puckers his flesh, Boo can almost see the women who sat at them, and he smells again, overpoweringly this time, the stench of burned hair. Suddenly Boo agrees with Da. This is no place for the living.

For another fifteen or twenty minutes, the two men inside work, pushing the machines across the floor and collecting more of the smaller, blackened things. Everything is taken left, to the area of the room they are…what? Decorating? Arranging? Boo can’t figure it out, even when they talk to each other.

“To the right,” Pan says. “Five or six on each side.”

“We could get this done a lot faster with some help.”

“I’m the only one who knows what it should look like. Who knows what it did look like.”

Dr. Ravi says, “It’s just theater. Just a press conference.”

“It’s everything,” Pan says.

Boo has been so glued to the window that he’s caught completely by surprise by the shape at the door, the man who is suddenly standing just outside it, and it takes him a moment to recognize the voice that says, “No. It’s not quite everything.”

Pan turns, and his hand goes to his belt, but Rafferty says, “Don’t.” He’s got a gun in his hand, the gun Boo gave back to him, pointed at Pan’s substantial gut, and he pushes through the door, and the two cops follow him into the room, both holding guns in a way that looks loose and expert.

Boo moves right, signaling to Tee. When the boy stands up, Boo holds an imaginary camera to his eye and points Tee to the window he’s been watching through. Tee nods and wades through the weeds, and the last man to go through the door, the cop in uniform, glances back at the sound, registers the boy, and then turns around to face the room again.

“What’s this about?” Pan demands.

“Oh,” Rafferty says, “it’s a long list. Let’s start with you pulling the gun from under your shirt with two fingers and holding it out. Thumb and little finger, on the handle only. Barrel down.”

Pan says, “There’s no need for this,” but he does as he’s told, and Arthit comes forward and takes the gun. He puts it beneath his own shirt and then backs away again, his gun still aimed at Pan.

“So that’s one thing,” Rafferty says. “And then there’s this.” He turns to the window and waves Boo in.

Pan waits as calmly as though he’s just enduring a pause in the conversation. He pays no attention to the guns that are trained on him. But when Boo comes through the door, he takes a sudden breath, and then his eyes close briefly. When they open, they are fixed on the floor.

Rafferty says, “Surprised to see him?”

“I’m surprised to see any of you,” Pan says, but his voice is mostly air, and he still has not looked up. Color is climbing his face.

“You sold him,” Rafferty says. He is speaking Thai. “You. The hope of the poor and downtrodden. You sold him and a little girl who doesn’t have anything in the world except a baby that isn’t even hers. You sold them to a gangster who was going to kill all of them, except the baby. All he’d do to the baby is sell it.”

Pan keeps his eyes on the floor, but Dr. Ravi is staring at Rafferty as though he’s suddenly begun speaking in tongues.

“And you didn’t even have to,” Rafferty says. His voice feels like it’s being squeezed through a very small opening. “You could have bought Peep out of petty cash.”

Pan’s pink mouth contracts and loosens, then contracts again, and he says to the floor, “I tried.” The dog, which has been standing next to Dr. Ravi, eyeing the newcomers, hears something in Pan’s voice and goes and sits at his feet, looking up, concerned. Automatically, Pan reaches down and scratches the dog’s ears.

Rafferty says, “Oh, well, you tried. That makes everything all right.”

“He wouldn’t do it,” Pan says. “He wanted-he wanted-to deal with it his way.” He straightens up. The dog paws at his pants leg, wanting more, but Pan ignores it. “He was afraid she’d talk, the girl would, to someone. He was afraid you’d arrange for her to talk to someone.”

“And that made sense to you. So you said, ‘Okay, here’s where she is. Go kill them.’”

Pan says, “It wasn’t like that.”

“No? What was it like?”

“Wichat…knows things, from when we worked together.”

“Right,” Rafferty says. “He knows what happened here. That makes him dangerous, since you’ve decided it’s worth selling who you are in exchange for power.”

Dr. Ravi says to Rafferty, “Wait a minute. What side are you on?”

“Forget it,” Rafferty says. “So you were wrong. Get over it.” He comes another few feet into the room and looks at the arrangement at the far end. The lights are focused to create a sort of stage on which eleven blackened and sagging sewing machines have been arranged in a loose semicircle with a space in the middle. Two enormous photos of the burning factory have been put up on the smoke-black walls. Set in the space between the sewing machines is the platform Pan stood on when he gave his speech at the Garden of Eden. On the floor in front of the platform, ringed by the ghostly machines, is a heap of burned shoes, curled and shriveled fragments of leather and charred cloth, half-melted rubber.

“Are those really from this fire?” Rafferty says, pointing at the shoes. He can barely speak.

“Yes,” Pan says.

“And you’re using them,” Rafferty says, “for a photo op.” He spits on the floor.

“What happened here-” Pan begins.

“I know what happened here,” Rafferty says. “I know everything. I know you tried to save people. I also know you’re the one who locked them in. And I know how you used their deaths to make yourself rich, to get backing from people who normally wouldn’t have pissed on you. Porthip because he felt you earned his support and Ton because he decided that he’d better own you if you were going to run for office. And you sold yourself to him.”

“No, he just thought I did,” Pan begins. “But, really, I-”

“And when you sold yourself, you also sold the people who died here. Is there anything left? Is there anything you haven’t sold? And who did you sell it to? Everything you were supposed to stand for. You sold it to a man who hates the people you grew up with, squeezes blood out of them at every opportunity. You know, the kind of people you used to be, the kind of people who died here. And now you’re going to…to what? Cash in on their deaths, right? You’re going to use these people’s deaths as currency to buy votes.”

Pan says, “You don’t understand. Porthip, Ton-people like Ton-own this country. They’ve owned it forever, and they’ll never let go of it until there are people like me in office. People who are the real Thailand, not the Chinese Thai who have had everything for centuries. People like that will never share power with-”

“People like that?” Rafferty says. “People like that? I know about people like that. The woman I married was whored out by people like that. But let me ask you, Mr. Man of the Soil, how much of yourself do you think you can sell before you become people like that? A girl whose river was stolen, a baby snatched from its mother, a street kid. You were going to sell them. The people who died here, you’re going to use them. Who the hell do you think you are now?”

Pan’s eyes are everywhere. He clears his throat and says, “I-”

“Don’t bother,” Rafferty says. “It’s all over your face. Look, even the dog’s given up on you.”

And in fact the dog has gotten up and is walking toward the door, looking past Boo. And then he stops and his ears go up, and he lowers his head and begins to growl.

“Poke,” Arthit says, but the door is suddenly crowded with men, and in front of them, with Captain Teeth’s arm around her throat and his gun at her head, is Da. Even with death touching her temple, she keeps an arm wrapped tightly around the cashmere shawl that holds Peep.

Boo takes an involuntary step toward her, but one of the men racks his automatic, and the boy freezes.