'Size ten, blue, na?' As fast as a gambler's shuffle, she flips through the clothes and comes up with two garments.
Rafferty glances at them and visualizes the filthy rags they will replace. 'How long have you been on this street, Tik?'
She pauses halfway through slipping the clothes into a plastic bag and narrows her eyes. 'Four…no, five years. Why?'
'Maybe you know the kid.'
She shrugs. 'Many kids. Now even more.' Her eyes go past him and settle on something, and Rafferty half turns to see what it is. 'You very handsome tonight,' Tik says.
'Clean living. What were you looking at?'
'She gone now.'
He turns to survey the street. 'Who?'
'Lady,' Tik says. 'Farang lady. She look at you and look at you. Because you so handsome. You almost look Thai.'
Rafferty, whose straight black hair and smooth features mirror his mother's, knows this is a high compliment. 'What did she look like?'
Tik shakes her head. 'Not so good. Too fat, na? Too fat, yellow hair, big nose.'
Hofstedler's mystery woman. 'All farang have big noses.'
'This is why you good-looking,' Tik says. 'You almost got Asian nose. Also, black hair and eyes. Right color, very nice.'
Rafferty turns to scan the crowd behind him. 'And she went where?'
'Toward Superstar Bar. She go fast when you turn around.'
'Life is more interesting than I'd like it to be,' Rafferty says. 'So the kid. He's ten or eleven, real skinny. Got hair that looks like a hundred people spent a year tying knots in it.'
Tik's mouth widens in distaste. 'Not know.' She shakes her head and extends her hand to give him the bag. Her eyes fall on the fold of the sweatshirt and then come up to Rafferty's. There is a crease between her eyebrows. 'Blue?' she says. She shakes the bag as though the child is in it. 'He wear blue?'
'Blue as the sky, but dirtier. Head to…um-What in the world is wrong?'
Tik has stepped back, shaking her head vigorously. 'Thin, na? Blue clothes. Here, on the front-' She sketches a loosely shaped zigzag on her chest.
'That's him,' Rafferty says.
'No.' She holds out the bag to him as though he has something communicable, not meeting his eyes.
'What do you mean, no?'
'No. Just no.' Her arm remains stretched out, her hand clutching the bag, forgotten.
'Can you be a little more specific?'
'This boy. No good. Him…him…' She extends her right hand, index finger pointing like the barrel of a pistol, and lets her thumb drop. 'Bang, bang,' she says. Then she says, 'Him kill.'
5
The guard's head breaks the surface, spouting pints of muddy water. His jaws have been clamped open with a stainless-steel device designed for root canals. When it was forced into the guard's mouth, it dislocated his jaw, which sags to the side like something in a funhouse mirror.
The largest of the three shirtless men ringing the hole in the lawn puts a hand the size of a badminton racket on top of the guard's head and pushes him back under.
One of the other men laughs.
'I'm glad you find this amusing,' says the lady of the house, and the laughter stops as suddenly as though someone had shut a door on it.
The guard surfaces again, and the big man slams him on top of the head with the broad side of a brick. Red brick dust settles on the surface of the water. His arms flailing, the guard tries to get a grip on the grass fringing the hole, but the man who laughed puts the edge of his boot heel on the closest hand and grinds down. Whatever it is the guard is trying to say, the dental appliance turns it into one long, agonized vowel.
The biggest man picks up the garden hose that they have used to fill the hole and wields it like a whip, the metal at its tip opening cuts in the guard's scalp and face. Water spouts out of the hose in lazy arcs, sparkling in the late-afternoon sun. The guard goes underwater, this time on his own, trying to dodge the hose, and the man lashes at the surface of the water, splashing the thick liquid everywhere.
The lady of the house moves her chair back so she will not get mud on her shoes. She says, 'Give him another drink.'
When the guard surfaces again, one of the men grabs his ears, tilting his face up, and the big man thrusts the end of the hose into the guard's mouth and six or eight inches straight down his throat. Then he pinches the guard's nostrils closed. The guard begins to spasm, thrashing, striking out with his arms, spouting water like a fountain. After ten or fifteen seconds, the big man pulls the hose out, and a spurt of water gives way to a ragged howl loud enough and high enough to lift the birds from the trees and send them skimming over the placid, coffee-colored surface of the river.
'Two more times,' says the lady of the house, settling herself in her chair to watch the hose snake once again into the wide mouth. 'Or maybe three.'
The scream is cut off as abruptly as it started. 'Then we'll start to ask him questions,' she says.
6
Silhouetted against the setting sun, Miaow squats on the little balcony overlooking the Chinese cemetery eight floors below, staring a hole in the fire as she feeds the blue flames their blue fuel. The sleeve of Superman's filthy sweatshirt hangs over the side of Rafferty's rusty hibachi. A fine edge of flame licks its way down. With a long-handled barbecue fork, Miaow spears the sleeve, lifts it, and drops it into the center of the flames, raising a small puff of smoke and ash. The sliding glass door between the balcony and the living room is open, and Bangkok's March heat and the throat-scratching smell of burning cloth fill the room.
'Miaow,' Rafferty says. She turns her face fractionally farther away from him. 'Miaow, we have to talk.'
'After,' Miaow says in English. She does not say it loudly, but her tone is final.
The plastic bags hang heavy in his hands. 'Fine. But not too much after, okay? Where's Rose?'
'Using all your soap,' Rose says in Thai, coming into the living room. 'This boy has so much dirt on him I'm not sure there's anyone underneath.' Her sleeves are rolled up, and soapsuds gleam on her dark arms. An archipelago of splash marks decorates the front of her shirt.
'He doesn't have a house,' Miaow says fiercely to the fire. 'How clean would you be if you had to wash yourself on the street and they chased you away all the time?'
'We get the point,' Rafferty says. 'Nobody meant that he-'
'I was dirty,' Miaow snaps. She still has not looked at them. In the rigidity of her back, Rafferty sees the fury of the powerless. She knows that the decision, whatever it is, will come from the adults.
'And look how nicely you cleaned up,' he says as Rose rolls her eyes. 'Here's some special shampoo,' Rafferty says to Rose, pulling the bag open to show her a bottle of Kwell. 'There's some…ah, salve in there, too.'
'For bugs,' Miaow says disdainfully in Thai, without a glance. 'As though bugs matter.'
'Bugs do matter,' Rose says sharply.
