man he kicked drops, gasping, to the concrete.
It is important to keep the wall at his back. Everything he knows in the world has come down to this. It is important to keep the wall at his back.
The downed man is vomiting, knees curled against his chest. The one he had been paired with feints again on Rafferty's left, but this time Rafferty absorbs the punch, moving away to soften the impact and turning to try to intercept the sap. It lands on his forearm with a detonation of pain that threatens broken bones, and the man steps back and raises it again. Rafferty knows he cannot lift his right arm. The other men are coming in on him.
A blur at the corner of his vision. Before Rafferty can even question it, it turns into the boy, hanging with both hands onto the arm with the upraised sap, sinking his teeth through the shirt and into the muscle of the shoulder. The man with the sap grunts in surprise and then screams hoarsely as the boy's teeth break the skin and invade the muscle and bones beneath. He flails wildly, staggering back and trying to shake the boy loose, but every move he makes increases the depth of the boy's bite.
The other two men are staring in disbelief as Rafferty cups his left hand and brings the palm up with all his strength beneath the nose of the one nearest him, trying to drive the cartilage all the way back into the brain. The man makes a strangled, snuffling sound and staggers back, and Rafferty goes for the fourth man's eyes.
The man is ready for him. He brings his fist down on Rafferty's right shoulder, where the sap hit it, and Rafferty goes to his knees in a shallow puddle of water. The man above him draws back his leg for a kick, and Superman is suddenly clinging to it, pulling it back, bringing the man down facefirst. Rafferty rolls and snaps an elbow into the man's ear with all his remaining strength, and the man's head rolls around loosely. Suddenly Rafferty remembers the gun beneath his shirt, and he starts to reach for it.
'That's enough,' a voice says in Thai.
Rafferty looks up to see the shortest of the men, the one he kicked. He has an automatic in his hand, pointed at Rafferty's head. His other hand cups his testicles.
The man with the sap helps up the one Rafferty just elbow-punched. He seems only half conscious, his head hanging forward and his eyes unfocused. The one whom Rafferty tried to kill with the blow to the nose is bleeding heavily down his shirt and pants. Superman is sprawled on the concrete, facedown.
The man with the gun steps forward toward Rafferty, jacks a shell into the chamber, and touches the gun to Rafferty's temple. 'Stop,' he says. 'Don't ask any more questions.'
'About what?' Rafferty asks. The tip of the gun is unbelievably cold against his skin, so cold it seems to suck his body heat into it. 'Are we talking about Madame Wing or-'
'That's the message,' the short man says. 'Don't ask any more questions.' And he pulls back the gun and slams Rafferty squarely on the forehead with it.
The soi tilts and darkens, and Rafferty feels his head strike the pavement. He doesn't think he has lost consciousness, but the next thing he knows, he is staring down at wet concrete from a height of one or two inches. He puts his hands under him and pushes up, but they slide apart on the slick surface, skittering away from him, and he drops back onto the pavement. He changes strategy and gets his elbows against the pavement, forearms flat, and levers himself up to a sitting position.
The men are gone. Superman is several yards away, still facedown. He has not moved.
'Hey,' Rafferty says, and then realizes he has not said it aloud. He clears his throat, swallows, and says, 'Hey,' again.
The boy is motionless.
Slowly, Rafferty rolls onto his hands and knees, trying not to move his head too quickly. His right arm will barely take his weight. Favoring the left, he crawls to the boy's side and puts two fingers against his throat, where a pulse should be.
The boy groans ands turns over slowly, his eyes open. He has blood on his chin and neck, and his forehead has been scraped raw against the pavement. He takes in the damage to Rafferty's face and looks directly into his eyes. Then, very deliberately, he smiles. It is a wolf's grin.
'No police on Silom,' he says. There is blood on his teeth.
Rafferty finds himself smiling back. 'We don't need any stinking police.'
Simultaneously, the two of them begin to laugh.
Bleeding, laughing, and leaning against each other for support, they stagger toward home.
24
No more questions about what?' Arthit asks.
'Well, that's the issue, isn't it?' Rafferty moves the ice pack from his shoulder to the forearm the sap hit, which sports a swelling the size of a softball. 'What am I being warned off of? I lit a lot of fuses in the past few days.'
'Maybe you're complicating it,' Arthit says. He leans forward to examine the swelling on Rafferty's arm. 'Maybe it's only one story. Occam's razor and all.'
They sit side by side on the couch in Rafferty's living room. Miaow is in her room with the door closed, nursing Superman, who retreated rapidly at the sight of Arthit's uniform. Rose bangs around in the kitchen, unbagging the ice she ran down to buy the moment she set eyes on Rafferty and the boy. She also sweet-talked a druggist out of some prescription painkillers, two of which are beginning to remap Rafferty's nervous system
Her alarm at his injuries was obscurely rewarding, almost worth the pain. Unfortunately, it was immediately followed by anger at his having put himself-and, by extension, all of them-at risk.
He closes his eyes to indulge a pleasant wave of wooziness. The couch undulates slightly. 'I don't think it's one story, Arthit. Occam or not. I think that what happened between Doughnut and Uncle Claus is personal, just between the two of them. It's obviously not about money. She left behind fifty thousand dollars in watches alone. Nothing got stolen until Doughnut went back yesterday and bagged the software, if it was software. Whatever is going on with Madame Wing, it's something else. There's money involved, and it's something Cambodian.'
'Swelling's going down nicely,' Arthit says untruthfully. 'Do you suppose someone could put some of that ice into a glass of Mekhong?'
'We don't have any. How about a beer?'
'What kind?'
'What have you got? Heineken?'
'Singha,' Rose says from the kitchen, to let them know she is listening.
'How about a Singha?' Arthit says.
Rose looks up from the ice she is pounding. 'One?' It verges on a dare.
'Two,' Rafferty says.
A beat. 'You shouldn't drink beer with that pain medication.'
'Beer is a pain medication.'
'I know cats with more sense than most men,' Rose says. She throws open the refrigerator door, letting it whack the counter.
'So here's what I think, Arthit.' Rafferty tries to get comfortable and fails. Even with the pills distributing millions of tiny pillows throughout his nervous system, a clenched fist slams the inside of his head every time his heart beats. 'I went looking for Doughnut at Madame Wing's, and she hired me to find out about something else.'
'I suppose,' Arthit says, sounding unconvinced. 'Four of them, you say?'
'With a sap and a gun. No match for me and the kid.'
'And you've never seen any of them before.'
'Well, they're not your two cops.' He has told Arthit about the visit that afternoon. 'They're just muscle. They didn't know anything besides what they said: 'Don't ask any more questions.' They were there to scare me, not kill me.'
'This time,' Rose says as she comes out of the kitchen with the Singha. The glance she gives Rafferty as she
