owe money to. How can Murphy know?”
“Well,” Rafferty says, “how could he?”
“He don’t care,” Vladimir says, waving the question away. “Somebody say, ‘This is Nguyen,’ okay, no problem. He can play game. He like game. Wait until dark, use makeup and make his face look bad, like dead for long time. Old clothes, many hole. Smell like dead animal. Puts around his neck-” He draws a broad U dangling from his shoulders.
“A necklace.”
“Made from these.” Vladimir tugs on his right ear. “Two rope full. Like Elizabeth Taylor, but with ear. Ewen ARVN soldier afraid. Murphy go alone into willage, make woices-”
Fighting the image of the ears, Rafferty says, “Woices?”
“Voices,” Janos says. Dr. Evil is drumming his fingers on the tabletop; he’s heard the story already.
“Many woices. Man woice, lady woice, ghost woice. Talk Wietnamese, talk English. Woice come from ewerywhere.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute.”
“Ventriloquism,” Dr. Evil says. It’s nearly a snap. “This is the most famous part of Murphy’s legend. He was the Voice Man.”
“I am talking again now?” Vladimir asks from an affronted height.
“All yours,” Rafferty says.
“Ewerybody run inside. Dead man in willage, ghost woices, bad smell, ewerybody run. Murphy goes to Nguyen house-maybe, maybe not-and kick open door. Then he kill ewerybody inside. Babababababa.” Vladimir mimes a machine pistol with a jerky right hand. “Ffffft,” he says, and blows on his finger. “Murphy goes home, makes line through name Nguyen.”
“Seventeen hundred ninety-nine to go,” Janos says.
“Helicopter,” Dr. Evil says.
Vladimir says, “I don’t think-”
“Maybe the CIA does,” Rafferty says.
“He’s just trying to pry a few more baht out of you,” Dr. Evil says, leaning in again. “But you really should know all this, since the guy you saw is probably Murphy. Sometimes they don’t want to turn Charlie or kill him. They want information. What does the double know? Any operations coming up? Where are the village’s weapons hidden? Where are the supply trails? What’s the chain of command? Who else should they be talking to?”
“Right.”
“And let’s say the old electric clips on the scrotum or getting beaten half to death doesn’t open the man up.”
“Cuts,” Vladimir says. He sounds like he’s sulking.
“Or cuts. Murphy loves to cut. He was the best America had at making very long, very shallow cuts that hurt forever. Some people who can handle being punched and kicked for days go all jelly inside when somebody takes a knife to their skin.”
“Eyes,” Vladimir says.
“More of the same,” Dr. Evil says, “but worse. One thing Murphy liked to do was try to frighten villagers out of keeping Charlie’s secrets. He loved to cause fear. His favorite trick was to cut off Charlie’s eyelids and then haul him into the middle of the village and announce, ‘This man closed his eyes to what the Vietcong is doing here. He closed his eyes when I looked into them to see if he was telling the truth. Now he’ll never close his eyes again. Don’t close your eyes, or I’ll be back.’ That was one of the things that made other people in Phoenix refuse to work with him.”
“One of many,” says Janos.
“Okay, helicopter,” Vladimir says, reclaiming center stage. “Wietcong won’t talk, yes? Nothing is working. So Murphy send ARVN for somebody, anybody, some farmer or carpenter. Take both men, farmer and Cong guy, up in helicopter, beat both of them up, ask questions, beat up some more. Other man, he don’t know shit, don’t know nothing, but Murphy still ask question, beat up more and more. And then open door of helicopter and throw other man out. Maybe one hundred, two hundred meters up. Scream all the way down. Take first man and drag him to door. Suddenly he talking. Tell ewerything, tell about soldiers, guns, wife, children, ewerything.”
“So,” Janos says, with an undercurrent of satisfaction. “That’s Murphy.”
Rafferty sits back against the wall between the booths, taking the weight off his spine, and shuts his eyes.
“Enough?” Dr. Evil asks.
“I’m thinking.” His throat feels half closed.
“While you thinking,” Vladimir says, trying for casual and missing by a wide margin, “Murphy. He is here?”
Rafferty opens his eyes and looks at the man for a long moment as he brings himself back into the room and out of the world Murphy had haunted. When he knows that his voice will be there when he wants it, he says, “You’re asking me for information?”
Vladimir winces. Then he nods.
Rafferty says, “One more description.”
“After,” Vladimir says.
Rafferty says, “First.”
Dr. Evil lets out a ribbon of air, his eyes on Vladimir’s.
“Sixty-five, maybe a little older,” Rafferty says. “Big, six-four or so. Light brown hair, not quite blond, going gray, cut military but longer. Blue eyes, wide, thick nose, maybe broken. Big chin. Fat now, but probably not when you knew him, if you did.”
“Could be five hundred people,” Vladimir says. “Anything more?”
Rafferty brings back the man’s face but can’t find anything distinctive. “No.”
“My turn,” Vladimir says. “Do you know who Murphy is working with?”
He can think of a million reasons not to tell them, but who else is he going to talk to? “You know a Major Shen?”
Vladimir says, in an almost-worshipful tone, “Shit. You are joking?”
“I’ll give you that for free. No.”
Vladimir taps his fingertips against his lips and says something that sounds like “Yooey, yooey, yooey. You have another question?”
“Where has Murphy been since Vietnam?”
Vladimir says, “This is not enough money for that question.”
“It’s what I’ve got.”
“Then we trade.”
“Okay. Where has Murphy been since Vietnam?”
“Here. Southeast Asia. Not usually Thailand.”
“Where, usually?”
Vladimir seems to be weighing the value of the answer. “Other countries in the region. China, too.”
“Doing what?”
“Fixing.”
“Fixing what?”
“Major Shen,” Vladimir says. “Him and Murphy. Working on what?”
“Fixing what?”
“I give you this instead,” Vladimir says. He slips two bills off each stack and hands them to Rafferty. “Working on what?”
Rafferty waits, but no one objects to being short-stacked, and if they’re willing to lose money, it’s unlikely they’ll tell him what he needs to know. They’re all looking at him. “A guy who was killed yesterday.”
Dr. Evil says, “The one who wasn’t in the papers.” It isn’t a question, so Rafferty doesn’t volunteer anything.
Rafferty puts one bill back on each stack. “Can you guys get me more information?”
“Not going near Murphy,” Vladimir says.
