The fourth watcher

finished.”

“Why?”

“He’s home, I think. A guesthouse, two stories. A light just went on, second floor right.”

“You’re extremely good.”

“Tell that to Frank. He’d like to hear it.”

“I will. Where are you?”

“Soi 38, half a block off Sukhumvit.”

“We’ll be there in-” He looks out the window. Neon signs glow above the sidewalks now, beacons in the premature dusk. Arthit hits the switch for the wipers, and for what seems like the thousandth time since Rose and Miaow were taken, Rafferty inhales the sharp smell of newly wet dust. He locates a landmark. “Make it ten, twelve minutes.”

“It’s a shame we couldn’t get the third teller,” Ming Li says.

“We got two,” Rafferty says. “That’s two more than we had an hour ago.”

“We should have had Frank with us.”

“No. Frank needs to stay where he is. He’s out of sight, and he needs to stay out of sight.”

“He must be going crazy.”

“Call him,” Rafferty says. “Let him know what’s happening.”

“I don’t know what’s happening.”

Rafferty says, “Why should you be different?” He hangs up.

“Where?” Arthit says.

“Soi 38. Can you get us some help there?”

“Cops?” Arthit’s reluctance is both visible and audible.

“Unless you have connections with the army.”

Arthit brakes behind a bus and drums his fingers impatiently against the wheel. “Do we think he’s alone?”

“We don’t have the faintest idea.”

“It’s hard to believe,” Arthit says, cutting around the bus, “but I’m slowly becoming comfortable with that condition.” He picks up his own cell phone. “I can get three I’d trust to keep things to themselves.”

As Arthit dials, Leung leans forward in the backseat. “What’s in the other envelopes? The ones the big guy kept.”

Rafferty turns to him, feeling the stiffness of exhaustion in his neck and shoulders. “My guess is that it’s real money. The tellers pass the bad stuff and pocket good bills to balance it out. Say you withdraw five thousand baht. They give you five thousand in counterfeit and then pull the same amount out of the cash drawer and put it into the envelope. They’ve got the withdrawal slip, the drawer is minus the right amount of money, and they’ve passed the counterfeit. Everything adds up at the end of the day, and Mr. Korea’s envelope is full of real money.”

“Yes, now,” Arthit says into his cell phone. “Soi 38, stay out of sight.”

“And they keep the tellers quiet by threatening their families,” Rafferty says. “Poor schmucks.”

“Schmucks?” Arthit says, dropping the phone onto the seat. “Is ‘schmucks’ English?”

“English is a polyglot tongue,” Rafferty says. “A linguistic hybrid enriched by grafts from many branches of the world’s verbal tree.”

Arthit nods gravely. “Thank you, Doctor.”

“Anything I can do,” Rafferty says, closing his eyes and leaning back, “to illuminate the path of the ignorant with the torch of knowledge.”

“He talk like this a lot?” Leung asks.

“Inexhaustibly,” Arthit says. “If bullshit were oil, Poke would be OPEC.”

Rafferty, eyes still closed, says, “I think this is going to work, Arthit.”

“What’s going to work?”

“I don’t know yet.” He feels himself start to drift sideways, like a boat on a tide, and forces his eyes open. He turns to Arthit. “But look what we’ve got. Half a million bad baht plus almost forty thousand counterfeit U.S., and probably more where that came from. We know where the women and Miaow are, where Chu is. We’ve got- maybe-a couple of people inside, unless those two cops get really stupid. We didn’t have any of that eight hours ago. I’ve got a door opener for Elson, if I can figure out how to use it.”

Arthit says, “Why would you want to?”

“Weight. Just plain old weight.”

“A bullet weighs a lot if you put it in the right place,” Leung says. “Why not just kick the door in? Get your women. Kill Chu.”

“We might,” Rafferty says. “But if we do, I want to make sure one more time that they’re where we think they are. And I want to know who’s holding the gun on them.”

“There’s one thing we don’t have,” Arthit says. “Time.”

“Yeah,” Rafferty says. His watch says they have less than three hours left. “Right now I’d trade rubies for time.”

Half an hour later, Rafferty, Ming Li, Leung, and Arthit sit in Arthit’s car, around the corner from the Korean’s guesthouse. Water from Ming Li’s long hair is dripping onto the upholstery, sounding like a leak in the car’s roof. Arthit has a window cracked open so he can smoke.

“My hair is going to stink,” Ming Li says, waving the smoke away.

“Be glad it’s not a pipe,” Arthit says.

“You should really quit.” She is haloed by the headlights of the police car that has pulled up to the curb behind them. The wet skin on her neck gleams. Two of Arthit’s most trusted cops sit in the second car while a third, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, sits behind the wheel of a tuk-tuk and waits in the rain outside the guesthouse, keeping an eye on the door.

“You know, quitting is at the very top of my to-do list,” Arthit says. “Right after I get my wife back and ice Colonel Chu. Oh, and figure out what to do about this counterfeiting thing.” He looks at his wrist, flips the watch around so he can see it, and says, “He’ll call any minute now.”

“Why don’t you buy a shorter band?” Rafferty asks.

“It gives me character, makes me memorable,” Arthit says. “The same way some men wear bow ties.”

“That’s kind of sad,” Ming Li says, wringing out her hair. “Why don’t you get some cowboy boots or something? Or let your eyebrows grow together above your nose?”

“This is a carefully calculated affectation,” Arthit says. “It calls attention to the weight of my very masculine watch. It shows that I care what time it is but I’m not obsessed with it. It has a certain enviable flair.”

“What it does,” Ming Li says, “is make you look like a kid who borrowed his father’s watch.”

“Speak right up,” Arthit says. “No need to be deferential.”

“It is so not the bomb,” Ming Li says. To Rafferty she says, “Did I get that right?”

“It’s about as dated as Crosby, Stills and Nash.”

Ming Li says, “Well, how am I supposed to know? I’m from China, for heaven’s sake.”

Rafferty’s phone rings, and when he opens it, Chu says, “Where is he?”

“No idea.”

“That’s very sad. My watch says-”

“The nice thing about watches,” Rafferty says over him, “is that you can reset them. They’ve got that little stem you can turn, right next to the three.”

Chu’s voice is cold enough to lower the temperature in the car. “And why would I do that?”

“Because you have to. Frank just called me. He’ll meet me at five-thirty in the morning.”

“Where?”

“He didn’t say.”

“When will he say?”

“He’ll call me at five.”