The Fear Artist

“You want her?” the Thai man says.

Rafferty says to him, “Go away.”

The Thai man steps to the side and gives Pim a little push. “Go in, Angel,” he says in Thai, “and I’ll see you back at the room after three. Not before.”

Pim makes a wide circuit around Rafferty, eyes down, and hurries into the Beer Garden.

“You give her the pipe?” Rafferty asks, also in Thai.

“We share. She likes it more than I do.”

Rafferty turns to follow her in, but the man says, “She won’t go with you. Not unless I tell her to. And if you go in there and make a problem, guess who will get beat up.”

Rafferty stops, feeling Ming Li’s gaze from across the street.

“But if you want to talk to her,” the man says, “pay me forty dollars for a short time. I’ll go get her for you. Talk as much as you want for an hour. Forty dollars.”

“How about I pay you fifty and just break your nose?”

“Go back home,” the Thai man says. “Where you understand how things work.”

Rafferty stands there looking at the entrance to the bar. He mentally runs two or three chains of events and can’t find one where he’d have the time to get involved and stay involved.

He’s about to turn and go when the man says scornfully, “Big talk.”

Rafferty turns and nods at him. So furious it feels as though the road is rippling beneath his feet, he takes a few steps toward the side of the street where Ming Li is waiting-standing now-and as he passes the handsome Thai man, he folds his right arm, brings it as far across his chest as he can, as though he’s scratching his left shoulder, sets his feet, and swings the point of his elbow into the man’s throat. He scores a direct hit on the larynx. The man makes an agonized rasping sound and goes down on his back, both hands to his throat. He lies there coughing and hacking, rolling from side to side in a puddle, knees drawn up, and Rafferty bends over him and says, “I’ll be back. If I see a bruise on her, if I see a Band-Aid on her finger, I’ll have you torn into small pieces and fed to soi dogs. I will find your mother and make her watch them eat you. Nod if you understand.”

He waits, and the man nods. Rafferty leans closer. “And keep her away from that pipe.”

He straightens and sees a ring of watching people, mostly men. One of the women from the Beer Garden, a familiar-looking one, gives him a covert thumbs-up.

“Something wrong with his throat,” Rafferty says. “Listen to him. It might be contagious.” He keeps walking as Ming Li comes down the steps and falls in beside him.

“If that’s mercy,” she says, “I can do without it.”

DAENG IS ON the floor again. He’s come to prefer the floor. When he’s there, at least he knows he’s not going to fall.

He’d never imagined he could hurt this much.

“Up,” says the farang-Murphy, his name is Murphy-and the two men yank him upright. They shove him back into the chair, and Daeng squints through his one open eye at Murphy.

“I’m not going to play with you anymore,” Murphy says. “Did you know Rafferty before that night?”

“No.” He’s answered this a dozen times.

“Did you arrange to be the first man on the roof?”

“Ask the others.”

Murphy goes to the little table, knocked crooked and spattered with blood now, and picks up the box cutter.

Daeng’s bowels loosen. His forearms are already scored with shallow, intensely painful cuts.

“Did you arrange to be the first man on the roof?” He wiggles the box cutter. “Yes or no.”

“No, no, no.”

“Did he tell you anything while you were up there with him?”

“No.”

“You didn’t talk about anything.”

“I told you. We fought, he hit me with the door, I stumbled. I was falling off the building, and he stopped me, he grabbed my belt, and-”

“And he saved your life, and you repaid him by letting him go.”

“Yes.”

Murphy holds the box cutter vertical, inches from Daeng’s face. He says, “Stick out your tongue.”

Daeng says, “Uhhhhh, uhhhhhhh,” and then he’s weeping again.

“This is the third time you’ve been brought in and questioned, but you’ve never told the story about him saving you before, have you?” Murphy makes a quick movement and nicks the end of Daeng’s nose.

Daeng is sobbing too hard to answer.

“So you’ve had a lot of time to think this up. Maybe you and Rafferty worked it out together. How many times have you talked to him since that night?”

“Ne-ne-never, never.”

“I told you to stick out your tongue.”

A huge shudder racks Daeng, but he puts out his tongue.

“You know how much it hurts when you bite your tongue?” Murphy says. His voice is calm, even gentle, like an adult explaining something to a child. “Just full of nerve endings, the tongue is. Imagine what it would feel like for me to start at the tip and saw back an inch or so. Give you a forked tongue.”

One of the guards makes a choking sound.

Murphy looks up at the man behind Daeng. He says, “Are you in the wrong room?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you think this piece of shit has told us everything he knows?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, what would you suggest? Tell me what to do to him. Come on, be creative.”

The guard clears his throat.

“Sorry? You said what? Pull his hair? Call him names?” Murphy nods. “Good idea. Do it.”

“Sir?”

“It’s kind of crude, but who knows? Ball up your fist and punch him in the face. And I want to see you put some back into it.”

Daeng pulls his tongue in and squeezes his eyes shut. He hears the guard come around the chair, hears the feet stop in front of him. The guard’s breathing sounds ragged.

“Well?” Murphy says. “You waiting for him to bloom or something?”

Daeng hears feet scuff the concrete, and his head explodes. The force of the blow takes him off the chair and onto the floor again. He curls himself up against kicks and hears the guard hissing with pain.

“Broke your knuckle,” Murphy says. “Poor baby. Get him into the chair again.”

For what feels like the hundredth time, Daeng is lifted into the chair, hearing the gasp from the guard with the broken knuckle. The entire world is a pillow of pain Daeng is sinking into. The cheekbone on which the guard broke his knuckle beats with a hot red pulse, and blood is trickling down the side of Daeng’s neck. The swelling from the cheekbone pushes against his one open eye.

“Cuff his ankles to the chair,” Murphy says. “We’re down to it.”

The guards drag his feet up against the chair legs. Daeng doesn’t even try to resist. He hopes they’ll kill him. His wife and children flash in front of him, and he silently says good-bye, hoping their spirits will hear. He feels the warmth of the tears running down his face.

“Look at me,” Murphy says.

Daeng opens his right eye as far as he can. Murphy has the box cutter in his hand again.

“This is it,” Murphy says. “You tell me right now whether there’s anything more we need to know about you and Rafferty. I want you to talk, and clearly. To give you some motivation, here’s what I’m going to do if I’m not satisfied: I’m going to cut off your lips. You,” he says to the guards. “Grab his lips. You take the top, you take the bottom. Pull them as far away from his teeth as you can.”

Daeng tastes salt and sweat on the men’s hands, and then his lips are almost torn from his face.

Murphy’s eyes are boring into him. “You know, if I do this, nothing will happen to me. No one will even speak