Two strokes of the hammer drive the edge of the crowbar into the space around the upper drawer, and three good, back-wrenching pulls buckle the drawer in a rewarding fashion. It juts forward like a broken jaw. It is still locked, but he has opened it far enough to work it back and forth until the tongue of the latch comes free from the frame and the top drawer slides open.
As long as he is at it, he pulls it all the way out, giving him access to the middle drawer without having to destroy it. He sits on the floor with the top drawer in front of him and begins to go through it.
More bills and receipts, going further back than the ones in the desk drawer. He puts them in the duffel bag for review later. A photocopy of an international driver's license with Uncle Claus peering uncomfortably from the upper right. More unused letterhead for AT Enterprises. Two big manila envelopes. One of them contains Claus Ulrich's passport.
The other contains Claus Ulrich's passport.
Rafferty sits back on his heels. Both are current. One of them is for Claus Pieter Ulrich, a citizen of Australia. The other is for Claus David Ulrich, a citizen of Great Britain. Uncle Claus is two people.
At the rear of the drawer is a sheaf of American Express Travelers Cheques, already signed and countersigned. Anyone could cash them. They are in hundred-dollar denominations, banded together in groups of twenty-five. There are eight bundles in all, two hundred individual checks. Twenty thousand dollars, as negotiable as greenbacks.
The heart medicine, the wristwatches, the money. The stains on the bathroom floor.
Wherever Uncle Claus has gone, he didn't choose to go there. In all likelihood, he didn't go anywhere.
Rafferty feels pity rise up in him. Ulrich was a man alone, a man like Rafferty before he met Miaow and Rose, a man trying to make whatever he could of the life he had been given. He was a man who had loved his niece.
The second drawer of the cabinet beckons, but that involves getting up, and for the moment Rafferty doesn't feel equal to the exertion. Take three or four deep, slow breaths, put down the hands, push yourself upright, he thinks as he does it. On his feet, he rests a hand on top of the cabinet to steady himself and peers down into the second drawer.
What he sees makes his day even darker.
The drawer is completely full, jammed to overflowing with videotapes in lurid packages. Reluctantly he reaches down, fishes one out. CINEMAGIC, it says on the spine. On the cover is a young Japanese woman, bound hand and foot with leather restraints. A ball gag has been forced into her mouth, secured by a strap that has been fastened tightly around her head. There are tear tracks down her face.
'Oh, hell,' Rafferty says despairingly. Clarissa Ulrich's face swims up at him again. The apartment suddenly feels cold.
He pulls out four more: appalling variations on the theme of female torment and humiliation, all Japanese. The tapes look professionally packaged, meticulously lighted, produced with Japanese attention to detail: pain for sale.
The drawer is packed to the top rim. There must be fifty of the things.
He grabs a couple of cassettes at random and goes back into the one room he gave up on, the bedroom.
He finds the television in a teak armoire. The cassette player is below it. He turns it on, inserts the tape, and presses 'play.'
The tape has not been rewound. He hears the whistle and crack of a whip, followed by a muffled scream, before the picture tube brightens.
The young woman has been twisted forward and tied across the frame of a high-backed chair. She is naked. The man behind her lifts a knotted cat-o'-nine-tails and brings it down over her bare back with all his strength. The sound goes through Rafferty like a gunshot. There is no question about the damage being done. Her back begins to bleed.
Rafferty turns it off.
He wants to vomit.
The next tape is worse.
By the time he is back in the office, trying to pop the third drawer of the cabinet, he has managed to put it into some sort of skewed perspective. The man has an obsession with pornography of a particularly vile kind. After all, Rafferty tells himself, these aren't snuff films, just an appalling subgenre of professionally produced porn: Yes, it really hurts, but the participants are consenting adults. Japan being Japan, some of the actresses probably have fan clubs. Ulrich is undoubtedly long overdue for some serious psychiatry, but it doesn't necessarily mean that his fantasies carry over into his actions. One thing Rafferty has learned in Bangkok is that it's impossible to guess at anyone's sexual proclivities. Claus Ulrich, for all his disgusting peccadilloes, for all the violence he is doing to his own spirit, is probably harmless to others.
Then he works the third drawer open and sees the leather straps. The chains. The whips. The gags. The devices designed for insertion into a human body. His hand comes back involuntarily; he can't bring himself to touch them. He sits there, looking at this tangle of pathology and seeing disappointed eyes and a mass of flyaway hair, and he wishes he'd never heard of Clarissa Ulrich.
'Good Lord,' says the woman at the door. 'What a decorative mix you are. Thai and what?'
'Irish,' Rafferty says. 'Filipino on my mother's side.'
'How nice. Like a new cocktail or something. You know, you're always thinking Cointreau and what? But then you taste it, and it works.' The woman is an American, in her early thirties, halfway through Hofstedler's Tragic Decade of Decline, and wearing it well. Her light hair is twisted into a loose knot, held in place by three or four random pins. She came to the door in a robe with a cup of coffee in her hand, reminding Rafferty how early it is. She has a comfortable, slept-in look.
Rafferty is too drained to force a reply. 'Have you seen anyone go in and out of the apartment next door in the past few days?'
'My, my,' she says. 'A mystery.'
'It's important. I wouldn't bother you otherwise.'
''Bother' is kind of a strong word.' She leans forward slightly, and Rafferty catches a whiff of fresh bread. 'Only the maid,' she says. 'Porkpie or whatever her name is.'
'Doughnut.'
'She came out of the apartment yesterday, about four. I practically bumped into her, right where you're standing. She was carrying a shopping bag full of stuff.'
'This one,' Rafferty says, showing her Doughnut's photograph. He forces a smile. The corners of his mouth feel like they weigh ten pounds each.
'That's her. First time anybody's been next door in weeks.'
He leans forward to rest his weight against the wall. It brings him closer to her, but she does not step back. 'When Mr. Ulrich was here, were you aware of anything strange going on?'
'Claus? Strange?' She blows on the surface of her coffee, and he can feel the breeze of her breath. 'Claus Ulrich is the most boring man alive.' She looks down at the coffee and back up at him. The gaze has a sleepy force behind it.
'People coming and going?'
'Only the maid. Popcorn.' Her eyes crinkle just enough to register amusement, not enough to emphasize wrinkles. 'Why do they call themselves things like that?'
'Because they can.'
'I had a maid once, called herself Pun. This was a girl who wouldn't recognize a joke if it wore a T-shirt with JOKE written on it.' She moves toward him very slightly and slips a finger through the hooked handle of the coffee cup. 'So. As someone who's almost, sort of, halfway, second cousin to the Thais, what's your theory?'
This woman is not going to be rushed. 'Thais have very long names. If they didn't choose short ones, they'd never get to the verb in a sentence. 'Pun' is short for 'Apple.' Girls like the word, and they choose the last syllable, but they can't produce the terminal l, so it comes out 'pun' instead of 'pl.' Okay?'
'Okay. A little silly, but okay. Your turn for a question.'
'Were you ever in Claus's apartment?'
She looks past him for a moment, deciding whether to answer. 'Once. I needed to borrow something.'
