The Fear Artist

“I need you in here.”

“And I need to go home. You tell me you got that little shit-head tied up in a room with his feet on fire, I’ll come in.”

“We almost had him.”

“Well, that’s inspiring. What happened?”

“We put teams of men on cheap hotels around Khao San and found him in one of them.”

“So. I guess he shot his way out? Kill a bunch of your guys?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“You don’t have a lot of dead guys?”

“No.”

“Then how the hell-”

“They chased him up onto the roof, but he jumped down a floor onto a fire escape-”

“You want to tell me how-No, wait a minute, wait a minute. I want whichever one of your violets saw him last, whoever had him on that roof, I want that man kicked in the gut until he’s told you everything about how a fucking travel writer gets away from a trained, armed officer. A trained, armed officer you chose, remember? And you e-mail me the transcript, and if anything smells even a little, I’ll come over there and talk to him myself. He won’t like that. And even if it doesn’t smell, break him. Put him on landmine duty down south and make sure the word gets out. Next guy who fucks up will be digging the things up barehanded while fuzzy-wuzzies snipe from the woods. Do you doubt I could arrange that?”

“No,” Shen says.

“And you’re right. Not to be unpleasant, but it’s Uncle’s money that pays for those fancy uniforms, all extra- long.”

“You’re the only one arguing,” Shen says.

“Why do you pick such tall guys?” Murphy asks. “Have you always wanted to be the shortest little boy in the room or something?”

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Shen says.

“I want to hear that guy screaming all the way to my house, you got it?”

“Certainly, Murphy. Everyone here knows what you want.” Shen disconnects.

“Hey,” Murphy calls to the driver, “you want me to give you directions, or you gonna read my mind?”

TIME TO LIGHTEN up, he thinks. Time to shake loose again. Dump all the weight and break free. They’re snarled in the perpetual Bangkok traffic jam, made worse by the flooded streets, the world just a blur of drizzle, taillights, and shining asphalt, with the occasional lightning pitchfork thrusting toward the city. He leans back and closes his eyes. How does this happen? Why do you let it happen? Every few years you look around and you’ve got all this shit. You’ve got a big fucking house with piles of expensive junk in it, you’ve picked up some women, and with the women there’s usually a kid sooner or later, and you’re living in some barn behind gates with people to drive your car and clean your rooms and wipe your ass. And a hundred people know who you are.

How many kids now, over the years? He can think of seven, five of whom he hasn’t seen in decades, but he knows he’s missing a few. No point in even trying to remember all the women. They were pretty much all the same woman anyway.

Some of the kids were okay. Some of them made it to college, and a couple are in the States. Had a few dominants in there. But some of them were eaten in the jungle.

Then, of course, there’s Treasure. What the hell is he going to do with Treasure? The only kid he’s ever had who he knows without a tenth of a drop of doubt is his. She’s his from teeth to toenails.

And that’s the problem. She’s her daddy’s girl. Leave her with some unsuspecting couple, she’d cook them over an open flame and serve them to their children. He can’t put her with anyone, he can’t let her mother have her, and he can’t leave her alone. He needs to think about this, and fast, because he’s got to move.

He’s not having fun. And he’s got a footprint a mile wide.

He grunts at the thought of how much effort it’s going to take.

The driver says, “Sir?”

“When I want you,” Murphy says, “I’ll say, ‘Hey.’ Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You just get me home and I’ll see they give you another one of those pretty medals.” Get rid of the house first, he thinks. Sell it under the name he used to buy it and leave the money in that account forever because the Thais hover like flies around a transaction that big. Bring in some fruitcake to buy all the fake antiques and all the real antiques and the fancy couches and rugs and Song’s goddamn mahogany table. Give some money to the little women so they can go home rich to Mudville. Pay off the help-enough so they don’t complain but not so much that they brag about it.

Just like before. Except for Treasure. This is, what? The third time? But the first since Treasure-since it was clear who Treasure was.

Disappear and roll up the street behind him. Get a room somewhere, just him and his briefcase and his jeans and his shirt and his brains and his reflexes, someplace shadowy in the middle of the concrete jungle, the lines laid out like a spider to tip him if anyone’s looking for him. Tell everybody who matters that he’ll be back when he feels like it.

Let the weekly money accumulate in the bank accounts. Let people begin to miss him so he can raise his prices when he’s ready to start up again.

Find someplace for Treasure. Somehow.

Tuck her away under something very heavy with a high fence around it and then cut the strings, go rogue. Play some games, operate on his own without all these assholes looking over his shoulder all the time, doing the official tsk-tsk-tsk for the microphones while they urge him on with their hands. Plausible deniability, another concept born in ’Nam, using euphemisms like “action” for “killing” in case they were being recorded. Well, fuck plausible deniability, fuck the politicians, so busy covering their asses they’d blow a hand off if they farted, fuck the career officers with their eyes on the next star on their shoulder, who want the results but not the tactics. Fuck them all.

Do what he wants for a change.

Play without rules. Blow away some ragheads, maybe. Even up the odds down south. Operate the way he used to operate, back … back …

Back when he was young.

He hears himself groan and says to the driver, “No, I’m not talking to you.”

There are times when he sees himself as a hand grenade on a pool table. All the neat little balls rolling politely around according to the laws of physics, clacking off at their precious Euclidean angles, and here comes this kind of odd-looking ball that wobbles a bit and then blows all the balls near it to powder and creates a whole new order on the green felt, or what remains of the green felt. When the felt’s ripped to shit and all the balls are banging back and forth and hopping off the table and hitting the floor and breaking apart, that’s when a man can do some real work.

He had thought his time was over forever. People with his skill set and his experience were an embarrassment, like scraps of memory from an epic national drunk a few decades ago. America had fled the jungles and the rice paddies, it had abandoned the napalm and the Agent Orange and Phoenix Program tactics and entered into its World Policeman phase, and the way they played it, there was Good Cop and there was Gooder Cop. Benign capitalism pasteurizing the globe with blue jeans and shampoo and fine dentistry. Someone like Murphy, or an enterprise like Phoenix-which had taken out a couple thousand civilians a month, shredded the Geneva Conventions, interrogated with extreme prejudice around the clock on the faintest suspicion-well, as far as the new and improved United States was concerned, it was shocking to hear reports. The accounts of those things had been overblown, misreported, misinterpreted, or-if all the evidence hadn’t been destroyed-they’d been the work of a few out-of-control individuals who’d twisted circumstances to their own personal purposes. Tragedies of war, never to be repeated.

So he’d kissed it all good-bye, disappeared for a while into Indonesia, and spent some of the money he’d taken from the people who paid not to be on the monthly Phoenix lists. When he reemerged, he’d settled into