Elson shakes his head. “But … I mean, what’s your objective? Do you actually care whether we-they, whoever they are-are embarrassed, or whatever, by being linked with him?”
“If you really want to know, I don’t give a shit. If people do business with rats, they should expect to get the plague. On the other hand, if something should happen to Murphy, I just think this is information that you-or they, whoever they are-should have, before they make a big stink about it and call attention to the connection, to the fact that this guy was essentially their boy, on their payroll, doing their bidding. Before people figure out how dirty the bidding was.”
Elson starts to pick up the envelope and then pulls his hand back. “There’s no telling how they’ll react if something happens to him.”
“I understand that. But it seems to me, as a good citizen, that they should know about the massacre in Vietnam and the murder in Cheyenne and the murder here in Bangkok and the possibility of a major newspaper story and the interest of the Vietnamese before they go out and do something that will have the whole world looking at them.”
Elson picks up the envelope. “I’ll think about it. But Jesus, Poke. You’re supposed to be a travel writer, as far as I know. How does someone like you get this devious?”
“I’m just writing,” Poke says. “I got stuck in somebody else’s story. All I’m trying to do is write my way out.”
27
He jerks awake as the car begins to move, ripped from a dream in which Miaow was back on the sidewalk, her clothes and face filthy. She was running from someone, a shadowy shape looming behind her. His mouth tastes foul, and his heart is hammering, pumping pure panic through his veins.
“What?” he says. A rattle of rain hits the windshield.
“We going,” Vladimir says, turning on the wipers.
“Who? Oh, you mean-”
“Lady. Janos just give me one ring. Means she going.”
“Time is it?”
“You have watch.”
“Right, right. Ahh, twenty to six.” Through the windows the city is gliding into the terminal stages of dusk, hurried by the heavy cloud cover.
“The hotel’s coming up,” Rafferty says.
“I know, I know. Don’t tell me things I know, yes?”
“But you’re going to pass it.”
“I will be in front of them. Janos will be behind. If they looking, they will see Janos. Nobody looks at car in front when they think they being followed.”
“So,” Rafferty says, rubbing his face with his palms and wishing he had some coffee. “They see Janos, and-”
“And then I tell him go away. Then I let them pass me, but no problem because I was in front before. I do this many, many time, okay? When you were boy, I was doing this.”
“Fine.”
Vladimir moves his lips before speaking, as though rehearsing the line. “Where is Baby Spy?”
“She’s running some errands.” He’s not about to tell Vladimir that she’s in Chinatown, visiting a little old Chinese lady named Mrs. Ma, who sells illegal handguns.
“She is really your sister?”
“Half sister.”
“Ahhh,” Vladimir says. Then he peers through the window and says, “This your lady, I think.”
They’re creeping past the hotel as the traffic builds up to the nightly post-6:00 P.M. snarl, and Rafferty sees an attractive, tall, blond woman in a gray business suit, late thirties or early forties, coming through the revolving door and getting a big-tipper’s salute from the doorman. He springs to the side of an idling white sedan and pulls the door open for her. The hotel’s driveway is a looping curve up and down a gentle hill with the entrance at the top, and coming on foot down the left side of the curve, signaling a taxi, is Janos.
“Tell him to forget it,” Rafferty says.
“Why? We all in position. Why?”
“Look at her. She’s as Caucasian as Finland. I was hoping maybe she was a daughter, some sort of relative, but she hasn’t got any Asian blood.”
“So?”
“Well, if it looked like she might be for real-even if it only looked a little bit like that-it would have changed things. It might have meant she doesn’t belong to Murphy. But Jesus, look at her. Why is Janos talking to himself?”
“Talking to me,” Vladimir says, tapping the ear farthest from Rafferty.
“Take that thing out,” Rafferty says. “Put the phone on speaker.”
“I think we quitting. You say we-”
“Well, we’re here. Let me hear him.”
Mumbling to himself, Vladimir puts the phone beside him on the seat and pushes a button.
“… car has been waiting almost half an hour,” Janos is saying. “Rented by the concierge in her name, Eckersley.”
Rafferty mutters,
“I wish I had someone to search her room.”
“Baby Spy.”
“She’s busy.” He slumps back in the seat. “All right. Let’s do it.” He pulls an envelope out of his pocket and puts it on the seat, beside the phone. “That’s another two thousand.”
Vladimir grunts acknowledgment and cuts the wheel toward the curb, just squeezing past the car in front of him as the sedan with the woman calling herself Helen Eckersley comes down the curve of the hotel driveway. In the passenger’s mirror, Rafferty sees Janos’s cab slow to let her in. When he looks back at the seat, the envelope is gone.
“Good,” Vladimir says. “If they are professional, now ewerybody looking at him.”
On the phone Janos says, “This is her first time out of the room since I got to the hotel this morning.” Then he says, probably to his driver, “No, never mind. I’m on the phone.”
“She waiting in room for your call,” Vladimir says.
“Maybe.” Rafferty yawns hugely, watches the windshield in front of him steam up, and wonders why he’s here.
“You know today, Thai gowernment-Bangkok Metropolitan Authority-tell ewerybody in office to come to City Pillar Shrine for ceremony to Ka Kang. You know Ka Kang?”
“No.”
“Goddess of riwer, spirit of Chao Phraya. Ceremony to ask her to lower lewel of water before city floods.”
“Makes sense.”
Vladimir glances over at him and says, “You been here too long.”
“See, that’s the problem with America,” Rafferty says. “We don’t have enough gods. Our plane is late, we blame the president because of all the security nonsense. The price of bread goes up, we blame the president for the economy. The president, whoever it is, is just some schmuck in the White House who has no idea what to do about the price of bread, no idea what to do about the planes not taking off on time. But Americans don’t have a
