The Fear Artist

“Speaking of personal,” Ming Li says, “I want to try something out on Vladimir and … and this gentleman.”

“Janos,” Janos says.

“Thank you.” Ming Li gives him a smile that makes him smooth his shirt and sit straighter, and Rafferty realizes she’s got it calibrated, and that was about a 6.8. He thinks, God, what’s she going to be like at twenty? She says, “I’ve been wondering about the time they almost caught you in that hotel near Khao San. It doesn’t feel right to me.”

“Ahhh,” Vladimir says, nodding. “This is talent.”

Ming Li says, “You, too?”

“How could I not?” Vladimir says. He passes an open hand over his brow, reducing the shine somewhat. “It doesn’t work.”

Rafferty says, “What doesn’t?”

“This is the way it’s supposed to look,” Ming Li says. “This is what you’re supposed to think happened. Shen watched the house until Arthit left, and then he went in and tricked the seventeen-year-old maid into telling him which neighborhood you were hiding in. Is that about it?”

Rafferty nods.

“And the maid knows this,” Ming Li continues, “because nothing is kept secret from her in that house, even though Arthit’s contact with you could put him in jail. It’s nothing he’d keep from a maid.”

“Well,” Rafferty says, feeling uneasy, “Pim and I have a history. I put her there.”

“Baby Spy wery smart,” Vladimir says. “This is not something Shen could know. That you and small-girl maid have friendship. How? What record is this on? What paper, where?”

Ming Li says, “Ventriloquism.”

Janos says, “Obviously.”

“What?” Rafferty says. It’s almost a snap. “What’s obvious? It doesn’t do me any good if all you spooks sit there nodding sagely at one another and looking wise. What’s ventriloquism? I mean, other than that parlor trick Murphy can apparently do.”

Ming Li says, “You’re not going to like this.”

Rafferty says, “I’m getting good at living with things I don’t like.”

“This is a lecture from Frank, almost word for word. Let’s say you have a piece of intelligence you want to act on. You can’t be completely sure it’s going to bring your problem to an end, and if it doesn’t, if the problem isn’t solved, then the fact that you have the information will tell the other side who your source is. And you don’t want that, because if the plan fails, you need that source to remain in place.”

“So you pick dummy,” says Vladimir. “Same like wentriloquist.”

“Wait a minute,” Rafferty says.

“They set Pim up,” Ming Li says, so deliberately that she seems to be laying the words on the table one at a time. “And they did it so well that even she thinks she gave you up.”

“She did give me-”

“When all along,” Ming Li says over him, “there was someone else in the house. Someone who heard all of it. Someone, in fact, who came straight to Arthit from Major Shen and didn’t even pretend otherwise.”

Rafferty says, “No.” And feels a deep throb of certainty that says, Yes.

Everybody looks at him. Their eyes, the clatter of silverware, the noise and the smells of the restaurant, the bright yellow of his egg yolks-it all crowds in on him. He hauls himself to his feet, fighting a wave of nausea. “I’ll be back.” On the way out, he pushes past the waitress carrying Vladimir’s large Singha back to him.

Out on the street, he goes half a block before he registers that it’s still raining. He edges toward the storefronts on the theory that rain doesn’t fall straight down and there’s at least a possibility that it’s slanting away from the buildings.

The strategy’s failure distracts him from his panic about Arthit and Anna. By the time he makes the first right, having apparently decided subconsciously to walk around the block, his clothes are already clinging to him. He thinks about buying an umbrella and then forgets about it, seeing in his mind’s eye Arthit, how happy he looked with Anna; seeing Pim, the loss and the devastation in her face outside the Beer Garden. The pimp and, waiting for her later, the pipe.

What can he do? What can he do for anyone?

And while he’s at it, what can he do for himself?

He can’t find a way around it: Ming Li and Vladimir are almost certainly right. Shen’s visit with Pim was an ice-cold act of ventriloquism. Pim was dropped out a window to keep the secret that Arthit, lost in the long loneliness following Noi’s death, is falling in love with someone who has been inserted into the household, into his heart, to betray him.

But at the same instant, he questions the whole thing. Why? Why would Anna Chaibancha, well born and well raised, financially comfortable, someone who has turned her disability into a career, helping others to overcome the same challenge-a long-ago friend, for heaven’s sake, of Arthit’s dead wife-why would she allow herself to be put in this position?

Does it even matter why? The fact is there, blunt and ugly and unarguable. She’s a spy, she’s working for people who are enemies to both Poke and Arthit. She could break Arthit’s heart all over again and probably will. And she’s responsible, at least in part, for what’s happened to Pim.

By the time he reaches the second corner, he’s stopped noticing the rain again, and he’s turning the situation over in his mind, trying to bottle up the anger so he can think coldly.

When the idea comes, it’s beyond cold. To make it work, he’ll have to lie to the best friend he’s ever had.

“She’s staying at the Chiang Palace,” he says to Janos before he’s even seated. “I called her back this morning, and that’s how they answered the phone. I need you to get in there, find out what room she’s in, and get a look at her.”

“How do I find out what room she’s in?”

“I have to tell you this?”

Vladimir says, “This is why you get contractor,” and Janos says, over him, “No, no. I can handle it. But what then? After I know what room-”

“Then you find a way to get a look at her. They’ll have photocopied her passport when she checked in, so see if you can get a copy. Get police ID or bribe the desk clerk.”

“After that?” Janos says.

“After that I pay you fifteen hundred U.S.”

“That’s good, but, what do we do next?”

“You wait around, being invisible, and the moment you see her come down, you call me. If she’s leaving, you follow.” To Vladimir he says, “Can you get a car?”

Vladimir looks longingly at the empty bottle in front of him. “Can buy one.”

“Next option.”

“Rent, can rent one.”

“Good. Use the money I’ve already given you. Once you’ve got it, I’ll replace it and give you more.” He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes again, and he’s rewarded by the room tilting and whirling slowly to the right. He reopens his eyes, looking for something stationary that will help him stop the room’s spin, and sees the concern in Ming Li’s face. “I’m okay,” he says.

“You and Frank,” she says. “If someone chopped off your leg, you’d say, ‘No problem, I’ve got another one.’ What are we going to do about that woman with Arthit?”

“Nothing,” Poke says. “Not now.”

“Then when?”

“A long time from now. The next ice age. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. Let’s throw some more stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Then we’ll worry about her.”

“Mr. Elson’s office.”

“Is he there?” Rafferty says. He’s standing in the doorway of a closed shoe store, not far from his apartment. All he wants in the world is walk over there, take a shower, take a nap, and start painting the walls.