The fourth watcher

11

The Other End of the Line

'Two cops,” the fourth watcher says into the cell phone. The phone is a floater, purchased, along with four others, from the people who stole them from their original owners. Each

will be used for one day. By six tonight this one will be at the bottom of the river.

Against his will, the fourth watcher yawns; he had a long night, but a yawn is an admission of weakness. “They were dragging some girl along. But here’s the interesting part: There was a guy with them. Dark suit, even a tie.”

“Thai government?” says the man on the other end of the line.

“I’m tired,” the fourth watcher admits. “I should have told you the guy in the suit was an Anglo.”

There is a pause. The fourth watcher yawns again, silently this time, and looks at the traffic. Traffic where he comes from is bad, but nothing like this. Then the man on the other end of the line says, “Shit.” He puts a lot into it.

“And since our guy’s American, I’m figuring the guy in the suit-”

“Yeah, yeah.” The fourth watcher can almost see the other man rubbing his eyes. “Half of Thailand is following him, and now this. Cops and an American at four-thirty in the morning. What the hell is going on, Leung?”

“I just stand around and watch,” the man called Leung says. “You’re supposed to figure out what’s going on.”

“They went into the building. How do you know they went to his apartment?”

“Lights,” says the fourth watcher. “A minute, a minute and a half after they all went in, the lights went on in what I figure is the living room. Opens onto a balcony. Fifteen, twenty minutes later-make it five o’clock-they came out, all of them. Both cops, the Anglo, and the woman. About thirty seconds after that, the lights in the apartment went off again.”

“Where are you now?”

“Sex city. Nana Plaza. Our guy just went inside, into a bar.”

“At this hour? With a woman like that at home, he’s doing a morning quickie?”

“Bar’s closed,” says Leung. “Some Anglo guy showed up and unlocked it for him.”

“Describe him.”

“Only saw him for a second. Balding and combing it forward, little-bitty features in a big face. Oh, and a goatee. Got maybe twenty pounds he doesn’t want, mostly around his belt.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell. Any followers on our man?”

“Not unless they’re invisible.”

“Okay,” the man on the other end of the line says. “Wait a few minutes until Ming Li shows up, and then come on in and get some sleep. She’ll take him for the rest of the day.”

Leung stifles another yawn. “Three or four tails practically riding on his back all the time. Cops in the middle of the night. A guy who couldn’t be any more government if he had an eagle on his jacket. What do you think it is?”

“I think it’s the same thing you do,” says the man on the other end of the phone. “Trouble.”

12

A Yellow Heart

The go-go clubs of Nana Plaza, where Prettyman’s bar is located, don’t light up until 6:00 p.m., but the open-air bars flanking the end of the Plaza that spills into Soi Nana are

already packed at 10:30 in the morning and exuding an air of desperate fun. The tables are jammed with drinkers, some of whom can barely sit upright and most of whom look as though they haven’t been to bed in days: Bags sag beneath eyes, graying whiskers bristle, hair as lank as raw bacon hangs over foreheads. Trembling hands hoist glasses. Here and there, Rafferty sees a morning-shift girl, her arms draped around one of the drinkers, looking at him as though he’s just emerged, naked, gleaming, and perfect, from the sea.

Bad 1980s rock and roll, big-hair metal at its most aggressively ordinary, elbows its way onto the sidewalk. The as-yet-unclaimed women, who will be doing short-times until 7:00 p.m., hug the stools they’ve staked out, their miniskirts riding up over their thighs as they scan the crowd in the hope of intercepting a speculative glance. Most of them aren’t even pretending to be interested. It’s too early.

Rafferty knows exactly how they feel. Thanks to the visit from Elson and Rose’s nervousness afterward, he got maybe ninety minutes of sleep. His eyes feel like someone poured a handful of sand beneath his lids, and there’s something sluggish and heavy at his core. He knows there’s only one cure: coffee. The question is whether to go home and drink a pot with Rose or grab some here. He’s thickheaded enough that his indecision actually stops him in the middle of the sidewalk. One of the girls in the bar, seeing him pause, calls him in. For a moment he considers it-they’ve got coffee-but the music and the clientele combine to create a richly textured awfulness that’s better avoided at this hour. The light level drops slightly, and he looks up to see some truly alarming clouds.

Can he even make it home before the rain hits?

He is turning to walk to Sukhumvit Road when he sees the girl.

She instantly stops and drops to one knee to fiddle with a shoe, lowering her head so a veil of black hair falls forward and covers her features. In the half second or so that he sees her, however, the face leaps across the darkening day as though a flashbulb has exploded. She is extraordinarily beautiful. Her pale face is angular, sharp- boned, almost unnaturally symmetrical. Eighteen, maybe nineteen. Not Thai. Chinese, perhaps, or even Korean, although something about her features-the high bridge of her nose, the curve of her lower lip-suggests she might be hasip-hasip, fifty-fifty Western. But the thing that arrests his gaze is that there is something familiar about her. He knows he has never seen her before. He would remember if he had; she is definitely material for the memory bank. But he recognizes something in her face.

He is still staring at her when she glances up from her shoe and catches his eye. She gives him a sliver of a smile, more the thought of a smile than the thing itself, and then stands and walks away, her back to him, heading back up Soi Nana. He is certain she just reversed direction. As she retreats, he sees that she is taller than most Asian women, perhaps five-eight, another reason to think she might be hasip-hasip.

Not as tall as Rose, he thinks, and a bolt of guilt pierces him. He should be doing something-anything-about Agent Elson. And Fon, if he can; for all he knows, Fon is still in jail. The first thing that comes to mind is the two cops who were with Elson. He pulls out the phone again, turns it on, and dials the number of his friend Arthit, a colonel in the Bangkok police. As he waits for the ring, he turns back in the direction of Sukhumvit and begins to amble toward it. Arthit’s voice mail picks up, and Rafferty leaves a message, asking whether they can meet for lunch in a couple of hours at an outdoor restaurant near Arthit’s station.

He snaps the phone shut and asks himself again: home or somewhere here?

His decision arrives in the form of a typical Thai raindrop, perhaps half a pint of warm water, that smacks the top of his forehead much as a Zen master might clobber a meditating student whose attention has wandered. Before he can blink, thunder rumbles and the sky flickers: lights on, off, then on again, and suddenly it’s much darker than before. A giant burps high overhead, a noise like someone rolling cannonballs in a huge pan. Rafferty has learned respect for Thai rainstorms, which can empty an Olympic swimming pool on one’s head in a matter of minutes, and he hurries toward the intersection, hoping to flag a tuktuk before the deluge strikes.

Hope, as is so often the case, is disappointed. Poke hasn’t gone ten yards before the drain opens in heaven, tons of water falling, the drops so fat and heavy that their splashes reach his knees. A whiplash of light precedes by scant seconds a sound like the sky cracking in half. The rain increases in volume, slapping his shoulders sharply enough to sting. His world shrinks to a circle a few yards wide with himself at its soaked center. It is literally