running a regular little hotel here.'
'Arthit,' Rafferty says. 'The people she'll be sold to…'
'What about them?'
'They're not likely to wish her well.'
Arthit picks up the beer can and peers through the hole in the top, then looks back up. 'That's a safe assumption,' he says.
37
He matches the phone numbers to the faces in the file Arthit gave him and chooses the toad-faced one, the one who seemed to be calling the shots during their single encounter. While the phone rings, he surveys his little domain: two homeless children tucked away in one bedroom, a murderer chained to the bed in the other, sweetheart temporarily displaced. A tomato-soup-can burglar alarm stacked beside the door. His dream home.
A child answers the phone.
Rafferty has a sinking feeling he's been experiencing a lot lately. The last thing he wants to do is begin to think of Toadface as an actual human being. 'Can I speak to your father, please?' he asks in Thai.
'Sure,' the child says. Then she shrills, 'Papaaaaaaa!'
Papa. Just what he wanted to hear.
'Hello?' Toadface says.
'This is Poke Rafferty.'
'That was fast.' The man's tone is fat with satisfaction.
'Yeah, well, don't get ahead of yourself. Clarissa hasn't given me any money, and I couldn't raise fifty thousand dollars if you gave me a year.'
'And you've only got two days. Doesn't sound like we've got much to talk about.' Rafferty hears a child's question, and Toadface says, 'In a minute, sweetie.' His voice is completely different.
'That's one way to look at it,' Rafferty says. 'Two days from now, I don't come up with the money and you go ahead and destroy my family. And I lose a child I love, and you get zero. Nothing. Not a baht. Think about it. Does that sound like a worthwhile objective?'
The child asks another question, but it goes unanswered. It is repeated. Finally Toadface says, 'Have you got something else in mind?'
'I do,' Rafferty says. 'And you guys are perfect for it.'
Rafferty is picking up the tomato cans when the boy comes into the room. He immediately begins to help.
'We don't need these anymore?'
'I don't think so. Everybody who wants to kill us is busy.'
Miaow has gone to her room. She seems upset about Chouk's presence, especially the information that he is handcuffed, and Rafferty wonders whether she'll turn it into a bulletin for Hank Morrison at their next meeting. The boy is wearing his new blue sweatpants and the pink T-shirt Miaow bought Rafferty as a gift. It's too small for Rafferty, but on the boy it hangs like a poncho.
'Let's put these away for Rose,' Rafferty says. The boy follows him into the kitchen.
'The policeman who was here,' the boy says. 'Is he your friend?'
'One of them. I actually have several.'
A pause as the boy works something through in his head. 'You like him, even though he's a policeman.'
'I like some crooks, too.'
'Huh,' the boy says, unconvinced.
Rafferty closes the cabinet door and heads back to the living room, the boy trailing in his wake. He sits at one end of the couch, leaving room for Superman, but the boy sinks into a cross-legged stance on the floor. He fluffs the rug with the palms of both hands, something Rafferty has watched him do dozens of times. 'Soft,' he says.
'That's the point.'
He opens his mouth, thinks about it, and strokes the carpet as he would a puppy. At last he says, 'Too bad the world isn't soft.'
'Ah,' Rafferty says with a twinge of unease. They seem to be having a talk.
'Do you know why it isn't?'
Rafferty gives the question some thought. 'You mean, why is it softer for some people than for others?'
'Yes.'
'I have no idea.'
The boy doesn't even blink. 'Who does?'
'Oh, well,' Rafferty says. 'Lots of people have theories. Priests, politicians, philosophers. I think they're all guessing, though.'
'What's your guess?'
'Dumb luck,' Rafferty says, glad Rose isn't there to hear him.
'That just makes me angry.' The boy's jaw comes forward, bull-doglike.
'Then believe something else. Karma, reincarnation, Cosmic Lotto. Being angry's just going to make things worse.'
A shrug, too weary for a child his age. 'Like it matters if I'm angry.'
'Right now you're dry, you're wearing clean clothes, you just had that awful pizza with all the pineapple on it. You've got a bed to sleep in tonight. You've got friends.'
'Because you gave it all to me,' the boy challenges. 'Tomorrow if you change your mind, I'll be on the street again. How do you think that feels?'
'Better than being there tonight. And I didn't give it to you, we all did. Why do you think we did that?'
The boy looks down at the carpet. He makes scissors from his fingers and pretends to trim the nap. He shows Rafferty nothing but the top of his head. When he speaks, Rafferty can barely hear him. 'Phuket,' he says.
Rafferty had thought he had used up his evening's supply of apprehension, but there it is again, dead center in the middle of his chest. 'Right,' he says. 'Phuket.'
The boy looks up at him and then away. 'You won't tell Miaow.'
'I won't tell anybody. Look, there are lots of things I've never asked Miaow. I figure it's her business to tell me when she wants to. It's the same with you. It's your story, and you tell it to her when it's time.'
'I'll never tell it to her.'
'Your call.'
He plays with the carpet again. 'It was a man,' he says.
Immediately Rafferty thinks of Ulrich. He breathes a couple of times to make sure his voice will be steady. 'What happened?'
'I went down there because the police were looking for me here. And I wanted to be someplace where I didn't have to be, you know…' His voice trails off. 'Where I didn't have to be Superman.' He tugs the carpet hard enough to lift it from the floor. 'I wanted to stop taking yaa baa.'
'Good for you.'
'And I met a man. He saw me on the street and talked to me. He was an American, like you, and he…he seemed to like me. Not just for sex. He took me to movies. Real movies, in theaters, not videos. He bought me things.' Rafferty remembers the boy's sullenness during their shopping expedition and, with a pang of shame, the irritation it had provoked. 'He let me stay with him. I slept and slept. I stopped taking pills and smoking. When he wanted me, he gave me whiskey so it wouldn't hurt so much.' He lifts his head and looks in the direction of the hallway that leads to Miaow's room. 'It still hurt, really, but I said it didn't. I got to like the whiskey.' He seems to lose the thread for a moment, gazing down the hall. 'I began to think he loved me,' he says. 'His name was
