'If he were any dumber, he wouldn't have thumbs.'
A shake of the head, so tiny it is barely a movement at all.
'So you can't give me money,' Rafferty says. 'Tell me about Madame Wing instead. But listen, you have to know that I'm going to turn you over to the cops no matter what you say.'
Chouk settles back on the pillows and regards him out of the corners of his eyes. 'Because I shot Tam.'
'He had a wife.'
'I know. He said her name before he began to work on the safe. Mai. He said it like a prayer. I have regretted shooting him every minute since it happened. Since I did it, I mean. It didn't happen. I pointed the gun at him and pulled the trigger. It felt at the time like I had no choice, but of course I did.' His head drops back onto the pillow, and he draws several short breaths.
'Because he saw what was in the safe.'
Chouk's black eyes come to him and lock on his, and something flickers in them. 'Do you know what was in it? Did she tell you?'
'No.'
'I thought not. She'd have to kill you. Are you curious?'
'A man was murdered for it. A terrible old woman paid you ten million baht for it. Of course I'm curious.'
'Yes,' Chouk says listlessly. His brief flare of interest seems to have burned itself out. More than anything, he looks exhausted. 'You'd think it was something important, wouldn't you?'
'Isn't it?'
'To a couple of people. For most of the world, it's not worth five baht. I suppose it was important once, a long time ago, when someone could have done something about it. The worst thing is, there was probably no reason to shoot Tam at all.'
Chouk turns away. 'I'm going to jail,' he says. It sounds like he is trying the idea on.
'Afraid so.'
'It doesn't matter. I couldn't finish now anyway.'
'Finish what?'
'Reducing her to ash,' he says mildly. 'Making her feel as much pain as possible and then reducing her to ash.'
'What did she do to you?'
'What did she do to me?' His eyes close slowly, and his lips curve into the ghost of a smile. 'What didn't she do? I could tell you a story, but it would only be a story, about a lot of people you don't know. People who wouldn't be real to you, a time that wouldn't be real to you. I can show you, though. And I will. You should know who you're working for.' He jerks against the chain connecting the handcuffs to the bed. 'Unlock these and I'll show you.'
'Can't.'
'It's not here,' Chouk says, his voice urgent for the first time. 'It's in my room. The thing that explains Madame Wing.'
'Sorry. You're here for the duration.'
'What would I escape to? I can't use my good hand anymore. I couldn't finish even if I were free.'
'You'll heal.'
'It'll be too late by then. It had to be done by day after tomorrow.'
'Why the day after tomorrow?'
'Later,' he says. 'After you see.'
'Just out of curiosity, what were you going to do with the deed to her house?'
Chouk's smile is broad and sudden. 'I was going to make it out to Vinai Pimsopat and send it to him. Anonymously, from a grateful constituent.'
Rafferty laughs. Pimsopat is a notoriously venal politician, even by Southeast Asian standards, a short, fat, black hole into which enormous quantities of government funds disappear. His nickname in the press is 'The Scoop.'
'She'd have had a hard time getting it back.'
'It would have cost her another ten or twenty million baht. Most of all, it would have frightened her.'
Rafferty says, 'Where's your room?'
'Not far. We can get there in twenty minutes.'
'Not you. You're not supposed to move around yet.'
'And you're probably not going to wander off and leave me here, so who can go?'
Rafferty gets up and goes to the door and pulls it open. 'We'll send Superman,' he says. 'After all, he's faster than a speeding bullet.'
'On April seventeenth, 1975, the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh,' Chouk is saying. His voice is weak but steady. 'We all stood in the streets and cheered. Cambodia was going to belong to Cambodians again. Our country had been sold out from under us. Lon Nol didn't care about the people; all he wanted to do was milk the Americans for more money. The Americans had decided that the central Vietcong headquarters were in Cambodia, even though there weren't any central Vietcong headquarters. So America sent the bombers.' His ruined hand describes an arc until the handcuff stops it and then lands next to a plate containing half a sandwich. Rafferty had fed it to him until he shook his head. 'A lot of Cambodian people died. Men, women, old people, children. The Americans were killing us every day of the week, dropping fire out of the sky on nuns and babies, and the government just sat there with its hand out saying 'No problem, send money.''
'While people died.'
'The Americans gave the Khmer Rouge the only thing they'd been missing: an enemy everyone could hate. The Khmer Rouge moved in, and Lon Nol ran like a rabbit.' He takes a shaky breath. 'What I remember most clearly is how young they were. The soldiers. They looked like children. Some of them actually were children, of course, and we'd learn more about that later. The way the Khmer Rouge used children, I mean.' He squeezes his eyes closed and shifts his weight, easing the strain on the bandaged arm.
'Do you want to rest?'
A tightening of the mouth, a dry swallow. 'I want to talk.'
'Your call.'
'Phnom Penh was a beautiful city, with broad boulevards and graceful buildings and trees everywhere. It had shade, the river, the flat plain, with its one hill and the temple on top of it.' He is looking at the opposite wall, and his eyes and voice are soft. 'I loved the city then. I played violin in the symphony orchestra. I taught music. I had-' He stops and swallows. 'A wife. Sophea. Two children. Two girls. Eleven and thirteen.'
A tear slides down his cheek, but he seems not to notice. He doesn't even blink his eyes against the moisture. 'So they came. We cheered for them. We invited them into our homes and fed them. We had victory parties. Two days later they began to empty the city.
'They said everyone was going to work the soil.' Chouk is speaking so softly Rafferty has to lean forward to hear. Superman has been gone more than an hour. It is getting dark in the room. 'It took them three days to drive everyone out, even the sick people in the hospitals. Six hundred thousand people in three days. We were each allowed to carry as much of our lives as we could squeeze into one bag.'
He puts his head back as far as he can, stretching the long muscles in his neck. 'The bag was a trap. On the way out of the city, the soldiers stopped and searched everyone. Anybody who had packed a book was killed. Anybody with soft hands-'office hands'-was killed. Anybody who wore spectacles was shot or beaten to death.' He closes his eyes and rolls his head slowly from side to side. 'My family stood in line with soldiers on either side, holding one another's hands, with our bags packed full of books, some of them in English. I had my violin. We were waiting to die.' He is breathing rapidly and shallowly, as though he were once again lined up, waiting for his bullet.
'This can wait,' Rafferty says.
'When it came to be my family's turn, an officer stepped forward and stopped the soldiers from opening our bags. We were led to one side and told to wait. I later found out he'd been a subscriber to the symphony. He'd seen me play the Beethoven Concerto in D. He'd enjoyed it. The soldiers took us back to the city, back to our own house. They put guards all around us, as though we had anywhere to run when the whole country was being turned into a prison.
