40
Clarissa Ulrich says, 'I'm going home.'
'I'm sorry, Clarissa,' he says. The telephone is slippery in his hand. Superman turned off the air-conditioning while Rafferty was gone, and the apartment is stifling. He has been home half an hour, too exhausted to get up from the couch and start the air flowing.
'Sorry about what?'
'Sorry I couldn't do anything that helped. Sorry about what I did do. The filing cabinet.' He hasn't told her about Doughnut, and he can't imagine that he will.
'I suppose I had to find out about him sooner or later,' she says bravely. She sounds to Rafferty like a child who has survived a trip to the dentist, although he knows the comparison's not fair, that she has been permanently damaged, to use Rose's word, by what has happened to her in Bangkok. 'Not much point in believing he was a good man if he wasn't.'
The urge to offer comfort is overwhelming. 'He was good to you. That counts for something.'
'He was a man.' Her voice seems to sour and curl at the edges. 'That's about all he was.'
There is a silence, which Rafferty uses to get to his feet and turn on the air-conditioning unit. It belches once and starts spewing hot air, rich with Bangkok exhaust. He stands in front of it, letting it hit him in the face. It smells better to him than the flowers. He never wants to smell another flower.
'I'm not necessarily finished, Clarissa,' he says, although up to that moment he had figured he was.
'Please,' she says. 'You've been very sweet, but I don't need anything more. He's dead, or he might as well be. And I'm alive, and I have to figure out what to do about that. He's not coming home, not ever.' Her voice is thin as a ribbon. 'I shouldn't have come in the first place.'
'You had to. You owed him that.'
He can almost hear her shrug, see the expression on her face. 'I guess.'
'When do you go?'
'Tomorrow night. I couldn't get on a flight any sooner. Apparently there are lots of people who want to get out of here.' A short laugh, more like a cough. 'Can't imagine why.'
'Well, maybe I can do something by then. Don't leave without calling me, okay?'
'What? What could you possibly do?'
Good question. 'I'm still checking on a couple of things.' One possibility occurs to him as he says the words, but it will require yet another favor of Arthit. At least this one won't threaten Arthit's career.
'I'll call,' Clarissa says, 'even if it's just to say thanks,' and she hangs up.
Rafferty throws the telephone at the couch, harder than he means to, and then has to go pick it up and make sure it still has a dial tone. It does, but that doesn't make him feel any better. He puts the phone on the table and goes into the kitchen for a beer. It's still early for a drink, but what the hell. He's just let a triple murderer walk away without so much as a slap on the wrist and allowed her only innocent victim, Clarissa, to go home with her life shattered. He's about to put a good man in jail. He's inveigled his best friend into something that could endanger both his job and his wife. He's sending a woman-a dreadful, unforgivable woman, but a human being nonetheless-to her death. A beer sounds right. Give him a little perspective.
Chouk looks around when Rafferty stalks into the bedroom. The television is on, the screen full of writhing snakes. The Discovery Channel has come to Bangkok. He downs the beer in four long gulps, picks up the remote, and kills the TV, wishing there were a button that would make it explode. 'Today,' he says.
'As good as any other,' Chouk says.
Rafferty scoots Chouk over as far as the constraints will permit. Then he unlocks the cabinet and shoves aside the stack of CD-ROMs from Claus Ulrich's apartment. The tidy pile collapses. Behind them is an envelope. He takes it out and drops it on the bed, relocks the cabinet, and hangs the chain with the key on it around his neck.
'The cop who's coming is okay,' he says shortly. 'You can trust him.'
'I have to go to the bathroom,' Chouk says.
'Yeah, I'd imagine you do. We're through with these things anyway.' He goes around the bed, fumbling through his ring of keys until he finds the one for the cuffs. With the key in the lock, he pauses. 'The kid didn't undo these, did he? He could probably unlock Buckingham Palace.'
'No. He just brought me the food and fed it to me, and took the little girl to school,' Chouk says. Rafferty unsnaps the cuff and lets it dangle from the bed frame. 'He's a nice kid.'
Rafferty straightens, feeling his back tighten and creak from sheer accumulated tension. ''Nice' may not be the precise word.'
'Nice is for rich people,' Chouk says, flexing his ruined hand to the limits of its mobility. To Rafferty it looks like a spasm. 'The rest of us do the best we can.'
Rafferty tears his eyes away from the hand. 'Are you even remotely interested in what's going to happen to you today?'
'No.' Chouk sits up stiffly. Dr. Ratt has untaped his arm from his side, but the ribs are still tightly wrapped. The white bandages make his torso look darker than mahogany. 'Be right back.' He takes tentative steps, heading for the bathroom.
Returning to the kitchen, Rafferty tosses the beer toward the trash can, misses, and kicks it with all his strength. It bounces off the wall and hits him in the shin, and he jumps into the air and lands on the can with both feet, mashing it flat. Then he kicks it again, and it slides under the stove.
'And fuck you, too,' Rafferty says to it. 'Stay there.' He pulls open the refrigerator. 'More perspective,' he says, taking another beer. The doorbell rings.
Rafferty shifts the can of beer to his left hand and, just in case, pulls the gun with his right. He positions himself in front of the door, holding the gun at gut-shot level, and says, 'It's not locked.'
Arthit pushes the door open and looks from the gun to the beer. 'Not a difficult choice,' he says, taking the beer.
'You're early,' Rafferty grumbles, heading back to the kitchen.
'Good morning to you, too. I would have brought you a Danish, but I thought it might endanger our relationship with Scandinavia.'
Only two beers left, a Singha and an Angkor, from Cambodia, that Rafferty doesn't recall buying. He takes the Singha. The toilet flushes.
'Our boy?' Arthit says, leaning against the kitchen counter.
'Let's not be breezy,' Rafferty says, ripping the tab off the can. 'I can handle just about anything except breezy.'
'I treasure these moments,' Arthit says, and drinks. 'When I look back on this part of my life, these little talks will be marked in yellow highlighter.' He drinks again, crumples the can, and tosses. The can hits the wastebasket, a slam dunk, and Arthit regards Rafferty expectantly.
'Would you like my last beer?'
'Sure,' Arthit says. 'What else are you going to do with it?'
'Aren't you on duty or something?'
'The law never sleeps.'
'Maybe not, but sometimes it sits for long periods of time with its eyes closed and its mouth open.'
'Gosh, I hate to cut this short.' Arthit pushes himself away from the counter. 'There's never enough time in the day, is there?'
'Wait, Arthit. I've been talking with our murderer, and I think we can do this without getting you in trouble with the folks who are protecting Madame Wing.'
'That's the nicest thing you've said all day.' Arthit folds his hands in front of him, looking patient.
'It's very simple. You arrest him for Tam's murder and everybody just leaves Madame Wing out of it.'
Arthit nods slowly, like someone who is too polite to disagree. 'A ten-million-baht ransom, paid and shredded,
