The Fear Artist

Rafferty says, “You mean, with-”

“With Elson,” Arthit says. Anna nods and pulls from the pad the page she’d begun to write on. She folds it neatly in precise halves and puts it on the coffee table.

“Never saw him before,” Rafferty says. “Short, fat, redheaded, red-faced. High blood pressure and a short fuse, great combination. Maybe sixty-five, maybe seventy. Had what would have been a handlebar mustache if it had been on his upper lip instead of coming out of his nose. Dressed like a budget tourist.”

Arthit shakes his head. “No idea.”

Anna is writing again, and they all wait. Even Pim is watching her with half-concealed curiosity. When Anna holds the pad up, it says, They wanted to know what the man in the street said to you?

“Yes. Could you see what it was?”

She shakes her head. No plosives, she writes. No fricatives. No rounded vowels. He was in profile.

“A plosive is like a b or a p,” Arthit says, with the air of someone parading new knowledge. “A fricative is an f or a v. They’re easy to see.”

“And a rounded vowel,” Rafferty says, “is a rounded vowel.” He thinks for a moment. “No m’s either. How about that?”

Impossible to read in profile, Anna writes.

“Major Shen was … upset with her,” Arthit says. “He swore at her, accused her of lying.” Rafferty is surprised at the anger behind those words, and Pim listens with her mouth open. Anna puts a hand on Arthit’s wrist as though to stop him, but he’s too steamed to slow down. “Even though he knows her, she said he treated her like a … like trash off the street.”

Anna is writing. She holds up the pad, and it reads Very bad man.

“What do you mean, he knows you?”

“When they were kids,” Arthit says. “They’re both from respectable families without much money, people who all pretty much know each other. Old families, but not powerful.” Anna nods. “It’s a relatively small circle, all living in Bangkok, all going to the same schools. She knew him when they were ten or eleven. Hell, Noi probably knew him.”

Anna has been writing, and they wait until she finishes. She holds up the pad. Bad even then. He hurt weak kids. He stole things.

“He’s lived in America,” Rafferty says, and waits as she writes.

Military school, Anna’s upraised pad says.

“He lived there long enough to get dual citizenship,” Arthit says. “That’s part of his legend, the only Thai cop with dual citizenship.” He shakes imaginary water from his fingers as though to say, Big deal. “People say he got recruited by the American spooks, and then a couple of years ago he was back here again, sent by the U.S. to help us deal with the problems in the south, although we all know what that really means. It means they want a listening post and an errand boy in the department.”

“He did go all glimmery about my potential Muslim connections.”

“Sure he did,” Arthit says. “For Shen’s department ‘Muslims’ is the answer to every question. Probably looks for an imam under his bed every night.”

“Well,” Rafferty says, “Somebody killed about five thousand people down south.”

“I’m not saying the problem isn’t real. What I’m saying is that we’re using bad people to fight bad people, and you do not want to be in the middle of that.”

“Yeah, well, that’s where I think I am.”

Anna is pointing at her pad again. It says, What did you tell them?

He hesitates for a moment and sees that she registers the hesitation. “I told them he said ‘Helena.’ ” He remouths it when he sees Anna squinting at him. “As in the city in Montana. And I said couldn’t remember the other thing he said to me, which was a woman’s name.”

“Not smart,” Arthit says.

Rafferty allows his irritation to show. “Well, I couldn’t remember it. But when I woke up this morning, I had it loud and clear. So I guess the question is whether I should call Major Shen and tell him what it is.”

“American name?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s think about it,” Arthit says. “About your calling Major Shen. While we try to figure out what’s going on.”

“Why? Why not just tell him?”

Arthit holds up three fingers, Thai style, beginning with the middle finger and ending with the pinkie. “Three reasons. First, Shen is paranoid enough to believe that you were lying last night-that you actually knew it all along and stalled so you could warn people or clean things up or some other nonsense. Second, you have no idea why the man on the street told you that name-and no, I don’t want to know what the name is, and I certainly don’t want Anna to know. For all you know, it leads to a massive booby trap.” He stops and stares at the floor as though he’s just heard what he said.

“And third?”

“Third, Shen’s people have a lot on their plate right now. They haven’t got time for irrelevancies. Maybe if you stay off their radar, just live a normal life, they’ll forget about you. Maybe.”

“But you don’t think they will, do you?”

“No,” Arthit says. “I don’t.”

Pim surprises all of them by saying, “Why am I here? Why did you want me to hear this?”

“Because you live here,” Arthit says. “Because it could affect you.”

Pim says, “That means you’re going to do something? To help Poke?”

“Well,” Arthit says, “of course I am.”

Pim smiles for the first time since Rafferty arrived and gets up. “I’m going to make more coffee,” she says. And she leaves.

“More coffee” Turns into an impromptu meal, since no one but Anna has eaten breakfast. Anna has gone into the kitchen to help Pim clean up, leaving Poke feeling guilty that he’s not in there, too, rather than sitting with Arthit, who’s been waited on by women all his life. Arthit is using Anna’s absence to talk about things he’s not comfortable sharing with her.

“We’ve got to look at how Shen’s people reacted,” he says. “They were there, on the scene, almost before the American bumped into you. It’s impossible that they showed up so quickly. He drew them, or someone else in that crowd drew them. And they get a few seconds of film of the dead man’s face and share it, and people snap to attention-both here and in America, if Elson and the other guy are any indication. Everybody desperately needs to know what he said.”

“A climate of highly evolved uncertainty.”

“Okay,” Arthit says. “One: They know who the man is, or there wouldn’t be all this hand-wringing. Two: It’s important enough to keep the footage off TV, and I’ll bet there won’t be anything in the papers. Three: They’re crazy to know what he said. What does that suggest to you?”

“One of two things,” Rafferty says. “Either he’s someone who wasn’t supposed to be here at all, and they have no idea what he was up to and what he was doing here. Or he’s somebody they lost.”

Arthit says, “Lost,” but Rafferty can’t tell whether it’s a question, a confirmation, or just a repetition.

“Yeah. Like he’s a piece that disappeared from the board, and when he suddenly turns up, it catches everybody off guard and they all scurry. Why did he disappear? Where’s he been? Why is he back? Who is he working for? And whatever they think he told me, it’s important, so even if they’re ninety percent sure he just accidentally bumped into me, the ten percent is probably enough to keep them interested.”

“There’s another issue, too,” Arthit says. “Who shot him? If it was Shen’s guys, then they were killing someone with information they needed, and apparently they needed it pretty badly. Doesn’t make a lot of sense.”