The Fear Artist

bar owner: She’s attractive, meticulous, accomplished, in control. The women who work for her are going to laugh at a man’s jokes, and in the right places. “Coke,” she announces. “American always want Coke.”

Rafferty loathes Coke, but he needs something and he accepts it gratefully.

“Problem?” she says. She’s speaking English, as she almost always does with him.

“I think so.”

“Sometimes we think have problem but not have.”

“Maybe you’re right,” he says. He knocks back about half the Coke, which is room temperature, trying not to make a face.

She gives him a reassuring smile and starts to pad back into the bathroom but stops in midstep and holds up a hand, her face the blank mask of someone who’s trying to hear something faint. “You have friend?”

“Jesus,” he says. “I hope so.”

“I mean now? You have friend come your house now?”

“No,” Rafferty says with a sinking feeling.

“You listen,” she says.

He listens. She has better ears than he does, but after a couple of moments he hears male voices in the hall.

Mrs. Pongsiri pats the air in his direction with her upraised hand: Stay there. She goes to the door and slides aside a little metal disk at eye level and peeks through the opening. Then she turns to him, puts a finger to her lips, and waves him toward her, fingers curved down.

“Special,” she whispers, moving aside for him. “Super wide angle.”

The lens is practically a fish-eye. Off at the far left, he sees three of them in uniform, as curved as the letter C by the edge of the lens. One of them, wearing a sergeant’s chevron on his sleeve, is stooped slightly forward, unlocking the door of Rafferty’s apartment. The other two have their weapons unholstered, hanging at their sides.

Rafferty says, without even thinking about it, “Shit.”

“You move,” Mrs. Pongsiri says, practically shouldering him aside. He looks down at her midnight-black hair, seeing the gleam of silver at the part and catching the scent of her, a scent so heavy she’d probably retain it after a sandblasting. He endures a cold wave of guilt for what she went through for him once before, for the danger she might be in right now. She’s tiny, she’s old, she’s valiant, and she doesn’t deserve any of this.

“He go in,” she whispers. “This one.” She draws the sergeant’s chevron on her sleeve with her index finger. “Other two wait. One look in, one look at elevator. Both look stupid.”

Rafferty wants to see for himself, but when he puts a hand on Mrs. Pongsiri’s shoulder, she shrugs it off. “He come out now. Talking, talking, door still open. Stand around. Cops so lazy, all same-same. Want everything free, act like big deal, sleep standing up, take money, money, money. Okay,” she says. “He close door, they all stand around some more. They put gun away.” She looks up at him. “You have trouble.”

“Well,” Rafferty says, “yes.”

She gives him the dubious eye, the eye she’s probably trained on a thousand customers who might or might not be deadbeats. Then she shakes her head.

“They waiting for you, yes?”

“Afraid so.”

“Okay,” she says. She goes into the living room and glances at her reflection in the beveled mirror that hangs over the couch. Yanks at her hair so a few long strands hang untidily over her face and then uses the heel of her right palm to smear her eyebrow makeup on that side, just a little. When she turns back to him, she looks like a woman who drinks away much of her day.

“You stay,” she says, and goes into the kitchen.

“What do you mean, I stay?” He’s whispering so sharply he’s half afraid they can hear him. “What are you-”

“Cops,” she says. “I no like. I like you, I like Rose, I like Miaow. Cops no good.” She drops into an effortless squat and pulls open the cabinet doors beneath her sink. “Okay,” she says again, and it sounds like a mantra of commitment.

“Listen,” he says as she pulls out a blue plastic trash bag, about half full. “I can take care of this myself.”

“Yes? How?”

“I’m working on that, but you’re-”

“When I come back,” she says, closing the top of the bag with a knot a mariner would envy, “you tell me how you handle.” She hoists the bag to her shoulder, Santa Claus style, and stands.

Rafferty blocks the door. “No way. I am not hiding behind an … an, uhh …”

“Old?” Mrs. Pongsiri whispers with a sweet smile. “Old woman?”

“No. I mean yes, a woman, I’m not hiding behind a woman.”

“Why you marry such a big one, then?” She elbows him out of the way, and he moves, mostly because he can’t imagine getting into a pushing match with someone her size.

But he takes her arm before she reaches the door and says, “No. I’m serious. I don’t want you to go out there.”

“They still there?” she asks.

He goes to the peephole and looks out. “Yes,” he says, and the door hits him in the forehead.

Mrs. Pongsiri pushes it open, and he has no alternative but to move with it, to stay behind it and not to make it obvious that she’s in a fight with someone over whether she should go into the hall.

She leaves the door partway open, and Rafferty finds he can see down the hall, standing behind it and using the peephole. Mrs. Pongsiri takes wobbly little steps, shuffling in a way that adds years to her age. “Hello, hello,” she calls gaily in Thai as she trundles toward the uniformed men. “They do something wrong?”

“Who?” asks the man who’d gone into the apartment, the sergeant.

“Them,” she says, going toward the garbage chute next to the elevator. “The farang and his wife.”

“You know them?” the sergeant demands.

Mrs. Pongsiri turns and looks at the sergeant long enough to make him fidget. “They live here,” she says slowly, as though talking to someone who’s challenged. “I live there. The elevator is here. How could I not know them?”

“How well do you know them?”

“I know the wife to say hello, how are you. The little girl doesn’t talk to anybody, but she used to be sweet.”

“And the man?”

“Farang,” she says tartly. “I don’t like farang.”

“Why not?”

“Thailand,” she says. “Thailand is for Thais. We have too many farang.”

“You’ve been here all day?”

“I’m here every day,” Mrs. Pongsiri says. “I go out once in a while to pick up a little something.”

“Did you see them leave?”

“The wife and the daughter went together, two or three days ago. They went up north, Chiang Mai, I think.”

“And the man?”

“Why are you hurrying me? I’m going to tell you.” She blows some wispy hair away from her eyes and sways a bit, the picture of someone who’s had a couple too many. Then she leans comfortably against the wall and smiles at them.

“So tell me,” the sergeant says. “I haven’t got the whole day.”

“Come to my apartment,” she says, and Rafferty starts looking around for a place to hide. “You’re a handsome boy, we could have a drink and talk about it.”

“No,” the sergeant says. One of the men is laughing, and the sergeant starts to smile, too, but tucks it away before it can claim possession of his mouth. “It’s very nice of you, but I’m on duty. About the man-”

“Go ahead,” says the cop who laughed. “We’ll stay here.”