“They’re
He goes out again through the trailer door and into the rain. “Offer them a ticket,” he says. “They’re cops, right? Badges and everything. We’ve got them dead to rights. Murder, kidnapping, practically anything you can think of. You could come here and arrest them right now, and their lives would be over. Or you can promise to let them walk if they’ll go back to Chu and keep their mouths shut.”
“I don’t know whether I can keep that promise.”
“Arthit. Who cares?”
“How do we know that they won’t-”
“We don’t.”
After a moment of silence, Arthit says, “That’s what I was looking for. Certainty.”
“If you were in their shoes, whose side would you come down on?”
“I wouldn’t be in their shoes. But I take your point. If they stick with Chu, they’re going to take a big one the minute he’s gone. If they go with us, they’ve got my promise. It doesn’t mean much, and they’ll probably suspect that, but. . If the boat is sinking, you’re going to grab anything that looks like a life vest.”
“I couldn’t put it better myself.”
“Still, it all depends on how much faith they put in my promise and how scared they are of Chu, and there’s no way for us to know any of that.”
“So we’re back where we started.”
“Let me think about it.”
“When Chu called, I gave him a line about you, one that might be tough for him to check.” He tells Arthit the story he sold Chu.
“It’s not bad at all,” Arthit says. “That counterterrorism stuff, they keep all that pretty close. I doubt that Chu could get a line to anyone who could contradict that.” He pauses. “But it only works for Noi. The goal has to be to get all three of them.”
“Look, Arthit, you can put these guys away forever. They’ve probably got families to worry about. And cops in prison have a short life expectancy. When they finally get out, if they ever do, they’ll still have to worry about Chu. We have to persuade them that if they play with us, the whole thing goes away.”
“We could make them promise to try to protect Rose and Miaow.”
“We could try.” Poke hopes Arthit can’t hear the doubt in his voice. He looks out over the mud-smeared desolation of the building site. All it lacks to mirror his emotional state is a dead dog. “So will you talk to them?”
“Oh, well,” Arthit says. “Let’s give it a go.”
Rafferty climbs back up the stairs, feeling like he’s done it a hundred times, and opens the door. The two men on the floor follow him with their eyes, trying to read his face. He puts the cell phone on the desk and presses the “speaker” button. Into the phone he says, “Arthit, meet Pradya and Sriyat.” He points at the two cops. “You’re going to talk to someone. He’s a police colonel, and he’s the only guy in the world who can get you out of this.”
“Your shirt is yellow,” Miaow says.
Noi, her head in Rose’s lap, opens her eyes and looks, startled, at Miaow.
The man with the gun glances down at himself, as though checking. “And?”
“That means you love the king.”
The man squints at her, puzzled. “Everybody loves the king.”
“And you have a bracelet,” Miaow says. “Can I look at it?”
“Why not?” The man transfers the gun to his left hand and extends his right. Miaow comes up to him and slips a finger under the yellow rubber bracelet. “ ‘Long live the king,’” she reads aloud. Like yellow clothing, the bracelets are everywhere in Thailand since King Bhumibol entered the fiftieth year of his reign.
“The king is everyone’s father,” the man says.
Miaow tugs the bracelet and lets go, so it snaps lightly against the man’s arm, and brings her eyes up to his. “Would the king be proud of you now?”
The man straightens as though he has been struck, and the muscles in his face go rigid as plaster. He brings his right hand up, across his chest and all the way to his left shoulder, and he backhands Miaow across the face.
The blow knocks Miaow sideways. She lands on her right arm, her elbow making a cracking sound as it strikes the cement. A line of blood threads down from one nostril, but she ignores it and raises herself on the injured elbow to look the man in the eyes.
Rose has started to rise, but Noi’s weight holds her down.
The man gets up very quickly and holds the gun out, his arm shaking and his face tight enough to crack. He racks a shell into the chamber.
The rain grows louder as the door to the warehouse opens, and Colonel Chu comes in, peeling off a raincoat. He stops at the tableau in front of him and hisses like a snake. The man with the gun snaps his head around to see Chu’s eyes blowing holes in him.
“Lower the gun,” Chu says quietly, almost a whisper.
The man does so, looking down at the floor. He is suddenly perspiring.
Chu crosses the floor and extends a hand. After a one-heartbeat pause, the man holds out the gun. Without looking at it, Chu pushes the magazine release. The magazine snicks out into his waiting hand. He ejects the shell in the chamber and flips the gun so he’s holding it by the barrel. He says, “Show me your teeth.”
The man glances around the room as though he hopes there is help there somewhere, and says, “My teeth?”
“Now,” Chu says. “Show them to me now.”
The man peels back his lips to reveal two crooked lines of teeth, and Chu lifts the automatic and snaps it forward precisely, using a corner of the grip to break one of the man’s incisors. The man chokes off a scream and drops to one knee, a hand clapped over his bleeding mouth.
“You have thirty-one left,” Chu says, “and I’ll break every one of them.” His face is as calm as that of someone who is reading an uninteresting book. “These people are my currency,” he says. “Shoot them and you’re stealing from me. People who steal from me have short, unhappy lives, although I’m sure that many of them would like to die long before they’re allowed to.” His eyes slide over to Miaow, still on the floor, and he says, “You. If you want to grow up, wipe your face and get back over there, where you belong.”
35
One thing at a time. He can only think about one thing at a time. If he doesn’t focus, he’ll be paralyzed. He won’t know which direction to pursue. Can’t think about Miaow, Rose, and Noi. Can’t think about his father. Can’t worry about Colonel Chu. What he can do right now is sit next to Peachy, in what must be the worst restaurant in Bangkok, and look through the window at the bank.
“It’s the wrong man,” Peachy says for the second time. This time she yanks at his sleeve to drive the point home. “They’re talking to the wrong man.”
“What a surprise,” Rafferty says. “Since it’s Petchara who pointed him out.”
The only thing in the restaurant’s plus column is a tinted front window, covered with a reflective film on the outside, installed to keep the afternoon sun from roasting the diners before they die of food poisoning.
Rafferty is thankful to be unobserved, although no one on the other side of the street is exercising much vigilance. He and Peachy might as well be standing on the sidewalk in Ronald McDonald costumes and waving. Elson hasn’t looked up in a quarter of an hour. After ten minutes of bullying the teller through the glass divider, he
