Superman.
'And I'm correct in assuming that this was not what he stole.'
'Do not bait me, Mr. Rafferty. Better people than you have tried.'
'I'm not afraid of you. Whoever you are, you're not used to people who hit back.'
She coils herself deeper in the chair, but before she can reply, she suddenly registers that the other two servants are still in the room. 'Out,' she snaps. They practically collide in their eagerness to leave.
'Did Chouk pick up the money himself?' Rafferty asks before she can launch into whatever she was going to say.
She is looking at him as though she is trying to guess his weight. 'It would seem so.'
'How did he do it?'
Grudgingly at first and then with mounting fury, she tells him about the taxis and the cell phone.
'It sounds like he's alone,' Rafferty says, working it through. 'There's nothing he would have needed a partner for. He gets into a taxi and pays it to wait on the boulevard for two or three hours before the maid is supposed to come out. He's looking for a setup. He writes down the plate numbers of the cars that seem to be idling around, if any are. Then, when the maid gets into her taxi, he follows for an hour or so to make sure there's no one behind him, and then he calls her and tells her where to stop.'
'What could you have done about it?'
He studies the bas-relief for a moment, not really seeing it. 'Well, off the top of my head, I would have been in a private car with a driver, a few blocks away. The maid would have had two cell phones, one I could call on and the one he gave her, so he would never get a busy signal. She would have called me the moment she was in the cab, so I could hit the street just as she pulled away. I would have changed cars once or twice so I wouldn't be spotted, and called her to find out where they were so I could direct my driver. I suppose there's a small chance that they might have made the exchange when I wasn't around, but not much of one.'
After a moment she says in a withering tone, 'Pak did not think of this.'
'Yeah,' Rafferty says, 'and neither did you.'
He hears people enter the room behind him and turns to see Pak, trailed by a plump maid with a blunt- chopped schoolgirl's haircut, no more than eighteen or nineteen years old. She wears a black skirt and white blouse, and she is hanging her head. It is not until she lifts her chin that he sees the quivering jaw and, above it, the bandages.
One eye is completely swathed in white adhesive, with the puffy edges of a cotton pad peeping out from beneath it. The bandages continue down both cheeks, all the way to her jawline. One slants white across her nose. Above the bandages on the left side of her face are two long, red gouges, scored deep into the defenseless tissue and stained with iodine. Her eyes skitter toward him for an instant and then drop to the floor.
Rafferty turns to Madame Wing, feeling the tightness come back to his neck and shoulders. 'Did you do this?'
Madame Wing's chin comes up, and the corners of her mouth pull down. 'And if I did?'
'Then you're an appalling old bitch.' Pak lays a hand on his shoulder, and Rafferty pivots quickly and knocks it off. 'Don't touch me again unless you want a lot of stuff to get broken.' To Madame Wing he says, 'Who the fuck do you think you are, the empress dowager?'
'Mr. Rafferty,' Pak says.
'I'm going to work this out,' he says, his voice ragged with anger, 'but not because of you. Because a Thai safecracker named Tam got killed by your Mr. Chouk, and he had a very sweet wife whose heart was broken by it. And thanks for telling me about the dead man. You can pay me or not, I don't give a shit. I never want to lay eyes on you again.' He wheels around and says to Pak, 'Get out of my way.'
'Stop, Mr. Rafferty,' Madame Wing says. 'Please stop.'
'I don't brake for assholes.'
'You want to solve this, don't you? For whoever it was. Then you have to see what else he sent me.'
He turns back to her in spite of himself. 'What?'
'You'll be interested,' she says acidly. 'Follow me.'
She wheels herself past Pak, past Rafferty, and through the door, the wheelchair making its trapped-animal squeal. Rafferty tracks her down a long hallway into a spacious, formal room. On the floor of the room are two large, open suitcases. At first Rafferty thinks they are full of rags. Then he looks more closely and inhales so sharply he starts to cough.
'Ten million baht,' Madame Wing says. 'Shredded.'
He hears a rustle of paper behind him, but he can't stop looking at the shredded money, ten million baht cut into narrow, worthless strips. 'He also sent this,' Madame Wing says.
He tears his eyes away from the suitcase to see her holding out a sheet of cheap notebook paper. It is written in a language he cannot read, just a few short words, a single line of flowing script.
'What does it say?'
She looks up at him with those luminous nocturnal eyes. 'It says 'I want the deed to your house.''
He looks back at the spirals of paper, worthless now. Trying to measure the amount of hate in the gesture. Against all his instincts, he realizes, he wants to know more about that hate.
He says, 'Give me the deed.'
PART III
31
For the second day in a row, Rafferty is up at six. After months of trying to get up early and failing, he has found the remedy: Sleep on a lumpy couch in the apartment's brightest room. He is at the kitchen counter, working on his second cup of coffee, when Miaow comes briskly into the living room. Her school clothes are primly immaculate, seams plumb straight, her face shining with the effect of the cold water she uses to wake herself up. Her hair is so precisely in place it looks like she arranged it one strand at a time. Rafferty's joints grow weak at the sight of her.
She is preoccupied, all business, and he has a sudden vision of what she will look like as an adult: She will look like a corporate vice president. She stops at the couch, notices the blanket Rafferty dropped when he got up, and goes through a small pantomime of exasperation. She does everything but shake her head. With an expression of sorely tried patience, she picks up the blanket and refolds it into sharp-cornered quarters. When she has placed it neatly at the head of the couch, she turns and sees him for the first time. Her eyebrows chase each other toward her hairline.
'Good morning, Miaow.'
She looks at him, then at the clock on his desk. 'Am I late for school?'
'No. I'm early. I want to talk to you about something.'
She purses her mouth, bringing Mrs. Pongsiri to mind, and angles her head slightly in the direction of her room, the direction of Superman. 'A problem?'
'Not about him,' Rafferty says. 'And not a problem, really. A good thing.'
He watches her cross the room and climb up onto the chair beside him. He suddenly realizes he has no idea what her morning routine might be. A pang of guilt pierces him: What kind of father is he? 'Do you want some milk or something? Cereal? Eggs?'
'An orange,' she says. 'And a Coke.'
'Coke? At this hour? And an orange?'
