Rafferty replays the sentence. 'I understand you're telling me you haven't heard of her-' he begins.
'Yes,' Heng says, nodding with some vehemence. 'That's what I'm telling you. And that's what I will tell you, no matter how many times you ask, even if you try to help me identify her by telling me she lives by the river with a manservant named Pak.'
'Got it,' Rafferty says.
'No matter how many times,' Heng repeats. 'And please don't ask again. It makes me very nervous.'
'Sorry. Back to Claus Ulrich.'
'Claus Ulrich, yes,' Heng says with evident relief.
'When was the last time you saw him?'
Up on the toes again. 'If I saw him, it was months. Just months and months.'
'Did he ever come in with anyone?'
'Solitary as a spider.'
'What do you know about him?'
'If it's the same man, he's a bachelor. I always make it a point to find out. You wouldn't believe, Poke, the number of times a man buys something wonderful and the little woman makes him bring it back. Takes one look at it and sees-I don't know, a garbage disposal or a trip to some dreary European capital, all cobblestone streets, odd toilet paper, and strange electrical plugs.'
'Must be heartbreaking. Anything else?'
'He has a niece in Europe or somewhere,' Heng says, emphasizing the effort involved in dredging up the fact. His eyes almost disappear with the sheer strain of it. 'He loves her very much. He talked about her several times.'
'Did he?'
'Oh, yes.' Heng leans forward and puts a hand over his heart, mirroring the traditional posture of compassion depicted on so many of the artworks surrounding him. 'I had the feeling he lived for her.'
Rafferty raises his eyes from the hand to Heng's own eyes, wide with fraudulent sincerity. 'It's hard to tell what anybody lives for,' he says.
Even at midday the bar is dark enough to let people change their clothes in privacy.
'I have no idea where he is,' Rafferty tells her. 'But I know that the maid is involved somehow.'
Clarissa Ulrich is wearing a different blouse, but her tolerance for the heat has not increased. Her face is red and wet, and when she barely glances at him as he sits down, he attributes it to exhaustion. They have taken Mac O'Connor's booth in the Expat Bar to get away from Hofstedler and the others, who are having their recurring conversation about playing a game of darts. In more than a year, Rafferty has never seen any of them actually pick up a dart.
'The maid?' she asks. 'Are you sure?' She seems not so much exhausted as distracted, as though she is only half listening to him.
He tells her about the arrangement at Bangkok Domestics. She listens with her eyes closed, and when he is finished, she says, 'This woman-this Doughnut-I mean, do you think Uncle Claus and she were-'
'It's too early to say. I have to tell you, your uncle Claus lived very quietly here. I've only been able to find a couple of people who actually knew him.'
'Who?'
'A dealer in Khmer antiquities and a…uh, a bookseller.'
She catches the hesitation. 'You were going to say something else.'
'No. I just wandered off there for a moment. Everything I learn only leads me to new questions.'
She has a glass of tomato juice in front of her, which she has not touched. She moves it and puts both hands on the table, folded in a businesslike fashion. The tension flows from her in waves. 'I need to talk to you about something.'
Rafferty lifts his beer. 'Talk away.'
'This is more complicated than I thought it was going to be. I don't feel right asking you to go any further without…well, without discussing payment of some kind.'
'Forget it. I'm having a good month.'
'But I…I didn't know what I was getting you into. And I want to make sure…' Her eyes are everywhere but on him. 'Please don't take this wrong. I want to make sure you don't write about this.'
Whatever he was expecting, this isn't it. 'Write about it?'
She picks up the tomato juice, slowly wipes the condensation away from the bottom of the glass with her forefinger, and puts it back down untasted. She centers it on the napkin. Then she centers the napkin in front of her. He wonders whether she is going to center the table. 'I know you probably wouldn't. But it's important to me that Uncle Claus is-' She breaks off, and her face tightens into a mask of control. 'That he's not slandered. His life shouldn't be trashed, just because he…he made mistakes, or had problems. He did too much good for that.'
A silence falls between them. At the end of the bar, Hofstedler laughs, a sound like colliding echo chambers. 'You've been to the apartment,' Rafferty says.
'Last night.' A tear snakes down her cheek.
'How did you-Oh, Jesus. I didn't lock the door, did I?'
'No,' she says. She puts one hand around the glass of tomato juice as if to cool it. 'Or the filing cabinet.'
'I'm so sorry. I banged it up too much to close it.' He feels personally responsible.
'Were you going to tell me about it?' she asks. She lets go of the glass and wipes her nose on the back of her hand.
'No.'
'Thank you for that. I mean it, that's very sweet of you.'
'It didn't have anything to do with you.'
'No,' she says. 'No, you're right. It doesn't. It has nothing to do with who Uncle Claus was to me. He was never anything but wonderful to me.' Then she is weeping, not delicately or discreetly, just great gulping sobs and a line of clear snot running down from her nose. She puts both hands over her face, and Rafferty reaches over and pats her shaking shoulder with a hand that feels as fat and heavy as a Smithfield ham. The fine, uncontrollable hair frames her hands like spun candy. It is a child's hair.
'I'm all right,' she says after a moment. 'Everybody has to grow up sometime.' She takes the napkin from beneath her glass and blows her nose in it, then uses it to wipe her face. 'People need to know the truth about things, I guess.'
'I suppose,' Rafferty says. It's not a doctrine to which he necessarily subscribes.
'Can I pay you, then?'
'No.'
She nods, conceding. 'Do you think you can find him?'
Rafferty considers it. 'Yes.'
She lifts his glass and takes the napkin, uses it to blot her forehead. 'Do you know what you'll find?'
'Well,' Rafferty says, 'you want the truth, right?'
Her eyes come up to his. 'Right.'
'The truth is that I haven't got the faintest idea.'
27
The man who stands in the door wears a pair of loose shorts in a dull pumpkin color that goes nicely with the yellowing bruises on his upper body and his face. He has bumps and cuts everywhere, his nose has probably been broken, and one eye is swollen tightly shut. Gashes-rips, really, they're too ragged to be called gashes-mark his face and shoulders in a violent calligraphy. The dark skin over his ribs is blotched with welts.
'You got my note.'
