'The demands of success,' Rafferty says.
'A good businessperson puts business first.'
'I guess she does.'
'A good businessperson also pays her debts,' Rose says. 'And, of course, the interest. Have you got a payment coming.'
He finds himself grinning at the phone. 'I'll change the sheets.'
'Hardly seems worth it.' Rose lowers her voice again. 'We'll probably have to throw them away when we're done.'
41
With nothing to do and a recently emptied stomach, Rafferty discovers he is ravenous. He hasn't eaten since the breakfast with Chut and Nick. By now, he thinks, they should have some buyers lined up.
He kills ninety minutes at a restaurant called Banana House, eating as much chili as the waitresses dare to serve a foreigner, since all Thais secretly believe that farang live on mayonnaise and warm milk. He sits back in the chair, burps fire, and thinks about the past few days.
Chouk is in jail, partially provided for. Action is being taken to close Madame Wing's long-overdue account. Clarissa Ulrich is poised for her heartsick flight home. Rose is designing the graphics for her new business. Hank Morrison is knee-deep in adoptive parents. Miaow is at school until three.
Doughnut is making a life, he supposes, either selling flowers or not. Whatever it is, he hopes it will be less interesting than the one she has had so far.
On his way out of the restaurant, Rafferty finds himself at a complete loss. The day stretches in front of him, hot and featureless as the Gobi, although he's never seen the Gobi. He's pretty sure it's hot and featureless, though, and if it's not, it must be a miserable excuse for a desert.
Well, the boy might be back by now.
It takes him just twenty minutes, a world record, to get home. With no need for hurry, the Bangkok traffic moves like lightning. He nods out in the back of the tuk-tuk and revises his plans as it lurches to a stop at the curb. He'll sleep until the end of the world, or maybe a little longer.
His sleepiness vanishes at the sight of his apartment door. It is wide open.
The boy, he thinks, the boy doesn't like air-conditioning. But even from the hall, he can see that something- everything-is wrong. He has the gun in his hand as he goes in.
The first thing he registers is the long slash in the couch, the stuffing exploding from it onto the floor like the cotton snow in the Christmas windows of Bangkok department stores. Yellow streaks across the wall announce the places where raw eggs shattered against it. The coffee table is on its side with one leg snapped off. The carpet where the boy likes to sit has been sliced and torn to expose the gray concrete beneath.
Why can't the world be soft?
The boy.
Rafferty runs down the hallway to Miaow's room and throws open the door. No one there, everything where it should be. The bunk beds are made. The pink T-shirt she gave him is the only thing out of place, wadded tightly on the floor. He picks it up, and it flutters to the carpet in pieces. It has been cut into ribbons.
And suddenly he knows, and his stomach shrivels until it is the size of a walnut and heavy as an anvil. He hurtles back through the hall, into the living room, and stops, his heart plummeting. The laptop is open, its screen bright and terrible.
The boy, he thinks. He was going to play Tetris. And then Rafferty realizes that he e-mailed Morrison, got up, and left the disk in the computer.
He hurries into the bathroom and, for the second time that day, he throws up.
He needs several frantic minutes to find the telephone number. He has had it for months on a pad next to the phone on the chance he might need it, but nothing is where it should be, and in his panic he picks the pad up and throws it aside and then chases it across the room, kicking things in front of him.
The boy glares at him from the computer screen on his desk. His hands are cuffed behind him, his feet separated by a pole like the ones that forced Doughnut's ankles apart. His eyes are wide and dry, glittering through his tangle of hair: Even then he had refused to weep.
That picture, on this screen, in this room. That disk in the computer. The boy's last chance to trust, and he finds that evil here.
I should have known. I should have known. The disk is on the floor, warped and blackened, partially torched with, Rafferty guesses, a disposable butane lighter, one of the dozens Rose has left behind. He dials the number on the pad and waits, swearing at each ring. The battery on the computer dies, and the screen goes black. A small mercy.
'Hello?' says a male voice on the other end, and Rafferty waits for a moment, struck dumb at the possibility he is making a disastrous mistake. If he talks to Miaow, she'll know something is wrong, and she'll demand to know what it is. He can't explain yet, doesn't know how to frame it, especially at this stage in their relationship. Adoption, for Christ's sake.
'Hello?'
On the other hand, if he doesn't say something, the boy will go get her. He will want to rescue her. From Rafferty, from what he thinks Rafferty is. It can't be risked. Whatever happens, Rafferty has to talk to her before the boy does.
It takes him less than two minutes to get through to the person he needs to talk to and make the arrangements: Miaow is to be kept there after school for an hour, or two if necessary, released to no one but him under any circumstances. She is not to be allowed on the playground. If she wants to know why, she is to be told he will explain it to her later.
When he's had time to think of something. After he's made things right with Superman.
He pulls the computer off the desk, yanking out the power cord, and throws it across the room.
As he runs onto the Silom sidewalk, all he can think is, At least I probably know where the boy is.
He sees him instantly.
The boy stands with his back to the street, pressed up against the chain-link fence that surrounds the school, watching the playground. He is once again all in blue-in the first clothes Rafferty bought him. Two very dirty smaller boys flank him, keeping lookout. Despite the tinted windows of his taxi, darkened against the heat of the day, it is all Rafferty can do to keep from shrinking out of sight.
Twenty or thirty feet away, a group of kids play with typical childlike violence, doing their level best to blind and maim each other, apparently immune to the noon heat. Miaow is not among them.
'Around the block,' Rafferty says.
'Okay.' The cab swings right, narrowly avoiding an oncoming van, and shoots up the street, hugging the middle to bypass the traffic in the lane nearest the curb. Cars and pedestrians scatter.
'Slower.' Rafferty is studying the side of the school, which takes up much of the block. No sign of Miaow. No other boys loitering, waiting for something to happen.
'All the way around?' They are at the corner.
'All the way.' A stretch of shop fronts intervenes, the sidewalks crowded with pedestrians. A few children, none of them Miaow. Be inside, be safe, he wills silently.
As they make the next right, Rafferty hands a wad of bills over the front seat. 'Back to where we saw those three kids. Slow down, but don't stop. I'll get out while you're moving.'
'Up to you. You have insurance?'
'There's no such thing as insurance.'
The driver makes the last right, and Rafferty jumps out of the cab at a run. He is no more than ten yards from
