'It's a cube,' Chon says grudgingly. 'About two feet on a side.'
Tam has located the corner of the safe. Turning his back to Chon to mask his actions, he slips the shovel down along its side and uses the handle as a lever to worry the safe free of the mud's grasp. It gives a few inches, and Tam wiggles the shovel around to scoop up some of the mud, which he tosses over the edge of the hole.
'About the mud on the lawn,' he says. 'You didn't answer me about the mud. Look at it, it's everywhere.'
'Oh, fuck the mud with your grandfather's dick,' Chon says. 'I'm going to hose it into the hole. The guard's getting paid, but there's no point in leaving a mess that he'd have to be dead to miss, is there? You want the cops asking him questions and knocking him around, or you want some time to sell the jewels right instead of throwing them away for a few baht just to get rid of them fast?'
'Maybe we're digging in the wrong place.' Tam does not dare to pry the safe loose, so he drops his shoulders and strains again, filling the shovel for what seems like the thousandth time. The splinter drives a nail of pain into his palm.
'Another six inches or so,' Chon says. Then his expression changes. Something reserved and watchful comes into his face. 'I'll dig.'
'But your hand-'
'Don't worry about my hand,' Chon snaps, watching him closely. 'I'll dig.'
'Forget it,' Tam says, giving up. 'I can manage another six inches.'
Chon looks at his watch as ten pounds of mud land next to his shoes. 'Manage it faster,' he says.
'Another six inches,' Tam repeats. 'Not very deep.'
'You want it to be deeper?'
'Just, you know, to protect these jewels-'
'She's not depending on the safe to protect the jewels,' Chon says. 'She's depending on being the scariest fucking woman in the world.'
'She's what?' Tam asks.
'Hmmm?' Chon's eyes come up from the hole to meet Tam's. He looks surprised at the expression on Tam's face. 'I meant him, not her. When he was alive. Very scary guy.'
Tam continues to look at him. Chon looks up at the trees.
'Listen,' Tam finally says, 'when I find this thing, I'm going to need my stethoscope. In my jacket.' He gestures toward the dark shape on the lawn. 'In the left pocket.'
After a moment Chon grunts and goes to pick up the jacket. He pats it and makes a little inquiring sound. 'What have you got?'
'A can,' Chon says. 'With a little…ah, something like a straw, coming out of it.'
'That's good, too.' Tam puts his hand out without looking, and Chon plops the can into it. 'And the stethoscope.'
Chon gives the jacket an impatient shake and flips it upside down. He says something sharp-sounding in a language Tam does not understand and then says, 'There's nothing else in the jacket.'
'A stethoscope,' Tam says. 'It's got two earpieces-'
'I know what a stethoscope is,' Chon says. 'I have a heart and a doctor, same as you.'
Tam does not look up. 'Then it's in the boat.'
Chon processes this for a moment and looks back down into the hole. 'You get it.'
'Don't be silly. I can dig while you're gone. What can you do while I'm gone? Walk up and down? Wave the flashlight around? You said it wouldn't be much deeper.'
Chon watches him for a moment and then turns off the flashlight and jogs off toward the boat.
Immediately Tam squats into the warm water, which comes up almost to his chin, and slides his hands around the edges of the safe to free it. Then he slips his arms under it and lifts.
At first he thinks it won't come. The mud sucks at it, and Tam curses quietly and works his arms back and forth in the mud, trying to break the vacuum, hitting his precious fingers on stones and roots and something sharp that cuts into the back of his hand.
He knows he is bleeding, but something pleasantly tight has begun to build in his chest, and he can almost feel heat coming from the safe, flowing into his arms and giving him the strength he needs. With a deep grunt, he pulls the safe free of the mud's grasp and straightens, standing in the hole with a dark cube in his arms, streaming water and mud.
A sound like crumpling paper as the birds desert the trees overhanging the river. Chon must be at the dock.
Moving quickly now, Tam slips the safe over the edge of the hole and examines it.
He sees a black plastic bag tightly knotted over a cube. He tears it open to reveal thin steel, irregularly scratched, dented, and pocked with rust. A long crimp creases the top where his shovel hit it, and rust reddens the hinges of the door. It looks cheap, and he is vaguely disappointed; he had been looking forward to a challenge.
No time now. Pulling a slender penlight from his pocket and cupping a hand around it to shield the light from Chon's view, he takes a quick look at the combination dial. Junk, he thinks. He picks up the aerosol can, shakes it twice, and places the tip of the thin tube that comes out of the can's top against the edge of the dial, where twelve would be on a clock. He pushes the button on the can, and it emits a sharp hiss. Tam pushes the button three more times, placing the thin tube at three, six, and nine. Then he puts down the can, picks up the shovel, and taps the end of the handle against the dial three or four times, hard.
'Mai,' he says. It is his wife's name and the only prayer he ever uses. Suppressing the shaking that has seized control of his fingers, he turns the tumblers.
Within fifteen seconds he has the safe open. He risks a glance over his shoulder: no Chon. He reaches into the safe.
And finds nothing.
He has expected a soft bag with the stones inside it, or perhaps the jewels themselves, loose as pirate's treasure, sparkling in the moonlight. There is nothing.
No. There is a plastic bag, flat as cardboard, with a knot tied in the top. He tears it open, hurrying now, and finds an envelope.
Tam pulls it out, laying it flat at the edge of the hole. The envelope is rigid manila with bruised edges, the size of a large piece of paper. Its flap is secured by a piece of twine twisted many times around a clasp. It takes Tam almost as long to open the envelope as it took him to open the safe. The papers in the envelope are slick and cold and stiff beneath his fingers, and he knows what they are even before he pulls them out. Photographs.
The top sheet has eight small pictures on it, each framing a person's face. All but one of them are male. They seem to be in their late twenties and early thirties. They stare unsmiling from the page, dark-skinned and wearing identical dark shirts and caps, standing in front of a bare wall. The lone woman is extraordinarily thin, with sharp features and the enormous, lustrous eyes of a starvation victim, but she does not look like a victim. She has the face of someone who chewed her way out of the womb.
Eight small pictures fill each of the other three sheets as well. These are not faces, though. In these pictures, taken from farther away, people bend forward, focused, doing something. Work of some kind. The photos are small, and the moonlight is not bright enough for Tam to make out what is being done. He aims the penlight at them and pushes the button.
His blood shrieks in his ears.
'You shouldn't have looked,' Chon says behind him.
Tam wants to turn, wants to face Chon, but he cannot.
He sees what the people are doing in the photographs, sees it but does not believe it, and sees it again. Believes it. His eyes slam shut.
'I am sorry about this,' Chon says sadly. Tam turns to catch a quick glimpse of the man. A silvery edge of moonlight gleams on the thing in his hand, and then Tam hears a muffled little sound like a cough, and something punches him very hard in the chest, dead center, and his knees go loose beneath him. He tries to grab the side of the hole, but his hands-his trained, sensitive, responsive hands-won't do what he wants them to, and he feels himself start to fall very slowly as the light shines into the hole, and he sees Mai's face looking up at him, and she smiles the way she always does when she sees him, and he realizes it is his own face, reflected in the water. He starts to say her name again. And then his head hits the water and he is gone.
