The Fear Artist

an open-air restaurant on the opposite side of the soi. This is the second time Rafferty has sat here watching for Pim. The first time, eight or ten months ago, he’d met her only moments earlier, and she had bandaged a bad cut on his arm while he wrapped her sprained ankle. They hadn’t so much met as collided. He orders another beer for himself and a Coke for his sister, and for the first time since he caught sight of her that afternoon, Ming Li yawns.

“Jet lag?”

“Nah.” She blinks the tears away. “I just didn’t sleep on the plane.” She brushes at her chin with her fingertips and then points at his. “Mirror reflection,” she says. “Your makeup is streaking.”

“I know. It does that in this weather. I don’t worry about it so much at night.”

“Oh,” she says, and then she sits upright as though her chair has shocked her. “Ohhh. Mr. Delacroix, on the passport? He not wearing, I mean, he doesn’t look like … I don’t know, Gunga Din, or whoever you think you are now.”

“It’s okay. The sketch they’ve got out now looks like this, so I’ve been thinking about getting rid of Gunga anyway. Tomorrow I’ll look like me again.”

“It’s not very convincing.”

“It’s not supposed to be. It’s just to keep the moving eye moving, so to speak. You looked past me, if you’ll recall.”

“I guess I did.” She yawns again. “How’s the errand coming?”

“Haven’t seen her. Let’s give it ten minutes, and we’ll pack it in.”

“Then use the time. Tell me what I don’t know: Phoenix and Lala, and-”

“Yala. Okay. Look at me. I want to see if your eyes close.”

“I’ll stay awake. You watch your awful little street.”

“Before I start,” he says, “I want to tell you that it’s great to have you here.”

“You’re kidding.” She breaks into an enormous grin. Then she punches him on the arm. “Told you.”

“Okay now, listen, and you’ll know why I’m only going to let you help me so much.” He fills her in on Murphy’s background-at least according to Vladimir-and the kinds of things he did under Phoenix. He’s describing what happened in the laundry when she holds up a hand.

“The little thing cut into the ticket?” she says. “It was there for her to feel it, wasn’t it?”

“I think so.”

“That’s really sad. He carried it, whoever he was, figuring he might get killed. And if he was, that little hole would tell the story to someone he cared about, someone blind. Sooner or later someone would take it to the shop, but only she would know what it meant.”

“We need to talk to them tomorrow. Both of us.”

“It’s enough to break your heart,” she says. She sips at her Coke and then rests her forehead on her fingertips. Looking at the table, she says, “Dad had a system for me, so I’d know if he got killed. Back in China. He carried a postcard with an address and a stamp and a written message. All ready to go, but not mailed. He figured if he got … you know …”

“He didn’t,” Rafferty says.

“But if he had, I’m saying, he’d designed a way to get word to me. His daughter.” She exhales heavily and looks back to him. “So who are they to him?”

“I’m guessing, but think the blind woman is his sister-in-law. I think Helen Eckersley was his wife and the blind woman’s sister.”

“Why? Maybe the blind woman was his wife.”

“Maybe. But what he said to me, the only thing he wanted to say, was ‘Helen Eckersley’ and ‘Cheyenne,’ and both women looked stunned when I said the name Helen while I was talking to them. And Helen had an accent, like her sister’s.”

Ming Li leans forward and rests her forearms on the table, then feels the stickiness and purses her mouth in distaste. She unwraps the napkin that her Coke has been sweating into and uses it to scrub at her arms. “What are your big questions?”

“Okay.” He takes a pull on the beer and lets his eyes rove the street while he thinks. “Helen Eckersley was killed in America four days before the dead man bumped into me. That’s fourteen days ago. Why, and what’s it got to do with what’s happening here? Second, why was the dead American in that crowd of protesters-or, to look at it from another angle, how did Murphy and Shen know he’d be there? They had troops on hand, cops with barricades to block traffic, a sniper-everything. No way someone spotted him in the crowd and they put all that together on the fly. That was a setup. Probably the only accident was that I was on that street.”

“How could they set that up?” Ming Li says.

“That’s why I’m confused. It seems unlikely that they created a whole demonstration somehow and then sent him an invitation. And one other question, just something that’s been bothering me. Let’s assume that it was a setup, that that’s the reason everybody was there. The whole point was to catch, or take out, the guy who died in my arms. That’s information you’d want to control. That’s something they’d want to keep secret.”

She’s unaware she’s put her arm back onto the table. “Yeah?”

“So what was a TV news crew doing there? This is Bangkok. They couldn’t have gotten there in time any more than the cops with the barricades could. And the very first thing Shen’s guys did-before they even talked to me-was try to get the tape. Took off after the cameraman like their lives depended on catching him. That crew was not wanted. So what were they doing there?”

Ming Li says slowly, “Maybe somebody isn’t completely on the team.”

Rafferty says, “From your lips to God’s ears. And maybe it’s who I think it might be.”

“You’re not asking the questions I’d be asking. Who was the man they killed, for one.”

“I know who he was. I mean, I don’t know his name, but I know, or at least I’m pretty sure, that he was a grunt in Vietnam when Murphy was there. Something happened there that was completely off the charts, even by the standards of the Phoenix Program. Something that threatens Murphy and his operation here.”

“And here’s a little question,” Ming Li says. “Why don’t they have a good picture of you?”

“Yeah.” Rafferty goes back to surveying the soi. “I’ve been asking myself the same-”

His eye is drawn to a bright patch of color: A handsome Thai man in his early thirties comes up the street, holding an umbrella to shield several hundred dollars’ worth of clothing-white slacks and a peach-colored shirt under a short black leather jacket. With him, ignoring the umbrella, hanging on to his arm, and talking a hundred miles an hour, is Pim.

He sits forward, and Ming Li follows his gaze. “Her?” she says. Then, before he can answer, she says, “Boy, look at her. She’s flying.”

“Is she?” Rafferty tries to see her through Ming Li’s eyes. Pim’s free arm is making short, meaningless gestures, like a charade of stuttering. The half of her that’s not under the umbrella is wet enough to shine. Her steps are so approximate she’s almost falling over her feet. She’s back in sidewalk-tart clothes-tight, glittering shorts, an off-the-shoulder T-shirt with a big red lipstick mark on it, the ghost of a giant’s kiss. Her hair has been frizzed out in all directions and sprayed, and it sparkles.

“Stay here,” he says, and gets up and goes down the steps to the soi, heading into the middle of the street to intersect them. He can hear Pim’s voice now, high and slightly shaky, broken by an occasional burst of laughter. She’s not just flying. She’s pasted.

He says, “Pim.”

The Thai man stops, but Pim takes another step and stumbles, and he tugs on her arm. She squints at Rafferty and starts to smile, but the expression dies on her face, and she takes a step back.

Once again the Thai man restrains her.

Rafferty wipes water off his face and says, “Pim,” again.

“Not Pim,” says the Thai man. “Name now is Angel.”

“I’m talking to her, not you.”

Pim pulls at the Thai man’s arm, shifting from foot to foot in her eagerness to leave. The man yanks her arm sharply, and she stands still, looking down at the street, heedless of the rain.