'Not really,' Rafferty says. 'Not when you think about it.'
She pushes her chair back from the desk very quickly, as though there might be a snake beneath it. 'Please, no. This woman is a very good customer. Also-how can I put this? — she is not someone I would want to make angry. She is formidable.' The French pronunciation.
'She'll get over it.'
The chair is already pressed against the wall so she can go no farther, but she flutters her hands at him, making him feel like a bird she is trying to shoo out a window. 'Please, let me explain. There are people you meet who, you know at once, will make a good friend. I'm sure this has happened to you. And then, much more rarely, there are people who you know immediately will make a bad enemy.' The fluttering turns into a fanning gesture, as though her face is hot. 'A very bad enemy.'
'This is a woman you met on the phone,' Rafferty says, 'not on a battlefield.'
'I was called to her house,' the woman says, as though this will make it all clear. 'I spent time with her. She is…' She searches the air above Rafferty's head, looking for the words. 'She is not easily forgettable.'
'Well, I'm sorry, because I'm going to have to talk to her. In fact, I need a photocopy of the reference she wrote.'
'This is very bad.' She is fanning herself again.
Rafferty smiles at her reassuringly. 'Oh, come on. What can she do to you?'
'I don't want to know,' the woman says.
Three minutes and one more mention of the police later, he has a copy of the letter of reference and a pair of fuchsia-colored sticky notes with Doughnut's address and the number for the sole telephone in the village she left behind. Halfway to the door, he turns back.
'It might be a good idea to talk to Ulrich's first maid, too.'
A pause, during which the woman seems to be framing her reply. 'She's dead,' she says at last. 'Motorbike accident. That's why he needed a new one.'
Rafferty takes another look at the cramped little office. 'Where do your girls come from?'
She blinks surprise at the question. 'The northeast, mostly.'
'Do you have any former go-go girls working for you?'
The heavily powdered upper lip rises a scornful quarter of an inch. Compared to the dead white of the powder, her teeth are yellow. 'Of course not.'
'Why not?'
'They're liars and thieves, every one of them. Liars and thieves.'
'Really,' Rafferty says, thinking of Rose's roomful of scrubbed hopefuls and then the scrubbed room Doughnut had left behind. 'We couldn't have that, could we?'
14
The maid's address is the Bangkok Bank Building,' Rafferty says into the cell phone. He has ducked into the bank's deep doorway to escape the setting sun's final attempt to incinerate the city before giving up for the night.
'Maybe she sleeps with her money,' Arthit says.
'And the telephone number is not in service.'
'Careful girl.' Arthit covers the mouthpiece and says something to someone else. 'I'm back,' he says. 'Maybe she was planning to steal something and disappear.'
'And maybe she got caught,' Rafferty says. 'And overreacted.'
'And maybe it has nothing to do with anything. Maybe she was living on the street. By the way, thanks for the photo. I faxed it down there and asked a couple of guys to check the hospitals and compare it with the boards.' The 'boards,' at least one in every community struck by the tsunami, display the photos of corpses that have washed ashore. A crowd gathers to study them each morning, all hoping to find, and hoping not to find, someone they love.
'So I don't have to go down?' He tries to keep the relief out of his voice. It is after five o'clock now, and it has been a long day: the meeting with Clarissa Ulrich, Uncle Claus's apartment and the Expat Bar, the scene with Miaow. The sneer from the woman at Bangkok Domestics.
'Probably not. There's no Ulrich on the hospital lists, although it could be that he's unconscious and didn't have any ID. The picture will help there. He's not on the computers of any of the hotels whose computers weren't destroyed.'
'Your guys ought to show the picture to the people from the other hotels.'
'Really.' Arthit sounds like he's rolling the word uphill. 'We never would have thought of that. Where there are people from the other hotels, they'll talk to them.'
'This guy is not a beach bunny, Arthit. He weighs three hundred pounds, and according to Clarissa, he burns faster than bacon. And you should see the apartment; it looks like he roomed with Ludwig of Bavaria. No one with taste like that goes outdoors if he can help it. And the only thing I can see him doing with a coconut palm is eating it.'
'So what's your guess?'
'I think it has something to do with the maid. Her name is Tippawan Dangphai.'
'Dangphai,' Arthit says with the tone-deaf inflection of someone who is writing and talking at the same time. 'Nickname?' All Thais have nicknames, a necessity in a country where a name can have six to eight syllables.
'Doughnut.'
Arthit sighs. 'Sometimes I think we Thais carry this merriment thing too far. I'll run the full name through the databases.' He clears his throat, usually a sign he has something to say and he's not happy about it. 'Poke, I'm afraid Clarissa did something stupid.'
'I'm not going to like this, am I?'
'She very politely called the two cops who had been taking her money and told them she wouldn't be bothering them again.'
'And you criticize Western manners.' Despite the sun, the temperature suddenly seems to have dipped.
'She told them I'd put her in touch with someone.'
'Just 'someone'?'
'Well, no. You impressed her quite a bit. She apparently went on at some length.'
'And they're not happy.' Rafferty finds himself scanning the street.
'No,' Arthit says. 'I think it's accurate to say they're not happy. They were already spending the rest of her money.'
'This is great, Arthit. The only people in Bangkok more dangerous than the crooks are the cops.'
'Some of the cops.' Arthit can be touchy about police corruption.
'And these particular cops?'
Arthit says, 'They're in the some category.' Then he says, 'I faxed their names and ID pictures to you. You might want to keep your eyes open.'
'Are you in any danger?'
'I laugh at danger,' Arthit says. 'But lock your doors.'
Okay. Cops after him. If anything happens to him, Arthit will know where to look. The thought is not particularly comforting.
As long as he's standing in the shade, he pulls out the letter from Doughnut's dreaded reference. He privately dismisses Arthit's suggestion that Doughnut was a thief, because a woman who strikes terror into people, as her previous employer apparently does, would not be likely to recommend a servant with large pockets. He unfolds the photocopy and starts to punch the tiny buttons, then thinks better of it. One does not, he thinks, call a formidable woman, one who apparently has quintillions of baht, from a noisy sidewalk at 5:00 P.M. It isn't done. People don't
