She stands there, blinking for a moment, and Chut moves behind her and closes the door. Suddenly there is a gun in Chut's hand, too. All Rafferty can hear is his own breathing.
'Put down the gun,' Madame Wing says. 'You can't kill all of us. Chut, if he doesn't drop the gun, shoot the woman.'
Chut brings his gun around to Rose and licks his lips. 'Sort of a standoff, isn't it?' he says.
'Actually,' Rafferty says, 'no.' And he draws the deepest breath of his life, swivels, and shoots Madame Wing twice.
At first he thinks she is trying to get out of the room. He hears the metallic animal squeal of the wheels as the chair rolls back, and then she throws up a hand and the chair tips backward and goes down, partially folding sideways as it falls. The blanket flies into the air and settles, in what seems to Rafferty to be slow motion, over Madame Wing's face. She coughs, and her left foot kicks once and then collapses against the edge of the lopsided chair.
'You're the one who said it,' Rafferty says to Rose. He has to swallow twice. 'There are people who should die.'
Nick and Chut stand with their guns dangling at their sides, pointed at the floor, looking like men who have lost a winning lottery ticket. Rose comes slowly the rest of the way into the room, ignoring the two of them completely. Avoiding Rafferty's eyes, she stands over Madame Wing until it is clear she is not going to move. 'I'm smoking a cigarette,' she says to no one in particular, and then, very suddenly, she sits on the floor. She turns her head so she is not facing Madame Wing and begins to ransack her purse.
Chut has opened his mouth wide to clear the sound of the shots in the small room.
'You've still got your buyer,' Rafferty says. He sits on the couch, which seems to be a very long way down, so far he thinks for an instant he has missed it. His body folds forward until his hands touch the carpet. He lets the gun fall from his fingers. He hears a match strike, and Rose's smoke tickles his nostrils. 'There really is a buyer, isn't there?'
'Yes,' says Chut, looking regretfully down at Madame Wing.
Rafferty leans back against the couch and closes his eyes. The room tilts, wheels around him, and rights itself. 'Then get her out of here and sell her,' he says. 'And if she's gone before my daughter gets home, I'll give you the deed to her house.'
43
Arthit says, 'Give me the phone.'
Rafferty hands it over with gratitude. Clarissa has kept her promise to call to say good-bye, and he has been unable to think of a single thing to tell her.
'I need to talk to you about your uncle,' Arthit says after identifying himself. He does not look at Rafferty. He is speaking his best English, British-clipped and stiff as a pig's bristle. He wears a polo shirt that Claus Ulrich's catalog would probably call 'color-free' and a new pair of plaid trousers, bright enough to light a ballroom.
Rafferty can hear a question on Clarissa's end, and Arthit says, 'He was working for us. He was a very valuable asset.'
Privately Rafferty thinks Arthit has been reading too much John le Carre, but he leans back on the slashed couch and keeps his opinion to himself. An hour with a household cleanser that stank of ammonia has deleted the smear of eggs from the wall, and a throw rug covers the wet spot from which he'd scrubbed Madame Wing's blood. He'd gotten up from the mutilated bed around four in the morning, the third time he'd dreamed about killing her, and moved the rug from the kitchen.
That leaves only the rest of the apartment to clean up. Sitting uselessly on the floor, he begins to gather the couch's stuffing.
'As you probably know, the commercial abuse of women in Asia is a serious problem, a failure of international policy. Cultural issues enter into it as well, the relative value to Asian society of men and women.' Arthit's eyes are closed. He seems intentionally to be choosing the driest language available without actually resorting to footnotes, but Rafferty gives it a second thought and decides it's probably brilliant. Anything more personal would not be half so convincing.
'So for us to have someone who was European, or at least Australian, who was mobile, who could cross borders…' He waits again, as Clarissa talks. Rafferty can't make out the words, but her voice is pitched high.
'Of course,' Arthit says. 'He was invaluable. Once he'd established his cover, buying all that awful pornography, he could position himself as a serious customer. He could gain their trust, something none of us could have hoped to do.
'We made arrests,' Arthit says. He is sitting sideways on the ravaged sofa, gazing at the spot above it where the egg smear used to be. 'I can say without hesitation that one Chinese gang has been put completely out of business, at least indirectly because of your Uncle Claus.' This is not only a clincher, Rafferty thinks; it has the added merit of being true. In a way.
'Yes, my dear,' Arthit says, his eyes flicking to Rafferty. 'He was a hero, of sorts. And what happened to him-well, it probably didn't happen in Thailand. We think he was most likely in Laos when they got to him. We may never know exactly.'
He listens again. 'It's my pleasure,' he says. 'No one wants to think badly of someone we love after they're gone. There's no way for them to explain.' His eyes find Rafferty again, and he shrugs. 'Yes, yes. So please don't be too harsh on us. And have a good flight.' He hangs up.
The two of them sit in silence for a moment, Rafferty with both hands full of cottony stuffing. Arthit looks out through the balcony window at the darkening sky, slowly going a sullen lead gray. 'I guess the sun has called it a day.'
'And who has a better right?' Rafferty asks, and immediately regrets his tone. He jams the stuffing into one of the slits in the couch, picks up some more, and drops it again, trying to exhale several liters of mixed emotions. 'Thank you, Arthit.'
Arthit pats his belly. 'You said something about dinner.'
'I did, didn't I?' Rafferty gets up stiffly, feeling battered and drained and older than he intends to be at death. 'I thought we'd cook it out on the balcony.'
'Probably a good idea, since I'd hate to think of you anywhere near a stove. You'd probably end up with your head in the oven. What's on the menu?'
'Man food,' Rafferty says with a relish he does not feel. 'Steaks.'
'With what?'
'What do you mean, with what? They're big steaks.'
'Where are Miaow and Rose?'
'At Rose's. Being girls together. And staying out of Superman's way.' He doesn't add that Rose left to intercept Miaow after the shooting without speaking to him. It seems to take him fifteen minutes to get to the kitchen. He opens the refrigerator and pulls out the steaks, two of Foodland's biggest, cut specially for the occasion. 'How do you want yours?'
'Just breathe on it a couple of times,' Arthit says, hitching his blinding trousers by way of preparing to rise. 'I'll bet there's a beer somewhere.'
'Heineken. Just for you.'
'It is manifestly a perfect world,' Arthit says.
'The victims were guilty,' Rafferty says. 'And the murderers were innocent.'
Arthit drains his fourth green bottle. 'I hate when that happens.'
They are sitting on folding chairs on the balcony, looking out over the Bangkok night. Most of Rafferty's steak is still on the plate, sheened over with cold fat. The coals, coated with powdery ash now, are settling into the hibachi. Rafferty reaches over with the barbecue fork and pokes them, producing a small explosion of sparks. He
