This is met with silence, even from Miaow.
Arthit says, 'This is what's known in the interrogation room as a pregnant pause.'
'Like I said, later,' Rafferty says. 'And maybe you do resemble Claude Rains.'
'So.' Arthit upends the beer and lowers it again. 'Dreary as the movie might be, let's cast your life story. If Claude Rains plays me, who do we give to Sydney Greenstreet?'
'Oh, for Christ's sake,' Rafferty says as Hofstedler, in his flowered fumigation shirt, lumbers into his mind's eye. 'That was your handwriting. Leon calling her a woman of mystery-was that your idea, too?'
'Not at all. He probably just forgot her name, what with her being in her thirties and all. On the other hand, Leon could spot a conspiracy in a water-gun fight.'
'You sent her to the bar. Whoever she is.'
'She's a perfectly nice Australian woman named Clarissa Ulrich whose uncle has gone missing. And I'm sorry about the indirect approach. I've been busy, and I ran into Leon, so I offered him something to do besides throwing money at bar girls. I didn't want to give Clarissa your address.'
'Was he down there?'
'The uncle? That's my first guess,' Arthit says. The can goes up again, and he swallows longer than Rafferty could hold his breath.
Rafferty waits until the can has been lowered. 'And this has what to do with me?'
'Well, on one level you wrote that piece about finding foreign men in Thailand who didn't want to be found. I gave a copy to Clarissa, and she thought it was very interesting.'
'But you know it was silly. I asked you where they were, and you told me.'
'Our little secret,' Arthit says. 'On another level-a much more important level-it's an opportunity to do me a favor.' He drinks again and smooths his hair with his free hand. 'At a time when it might be a good idea for you to be owed a few. We both know how much you hate to ask for favors, so I thought this would make it easier.'
'The adoption.' The process of a Westerner adopting a Thai child-as Poke hopes to do with Miaow-is an endless minefield.
Arthit pats his belly. 'Testimonials from four or five of Bangkok's finest, so to speak, would smooth things considerably.'
'What's this Australian got to do with you?'
'Nothing personal,' Arthit says. 'She was getting passed around among some of my hungrier colleagues. She arrived a week ago with about six thousand in traveler's checks, and she's down to three thousand now. With nothing to show for it. So I thought, let's snatch her from the jaws of the wolves and turn her over to someone who's going to need a few favors. Do a little something for both of you.'
'I wish I could say I appreciate it.'
'Just talk to her.' Arthit lowers his voice. 'I'll get you into his apartment, which is something my brother officers couldn't be bothered to do, and you'll probably find something that shows he flitted down to Phuket or Phang Nga. You're a reporter, Poke. You know more about how Thailand works than any other farang I know. A couple days down there, you'll have it wrapped up.'
'He looks much better now,' Rose says, coming into the room. 'It's amazing what a little soap will do. Hello, Arthit. How's Noi?'
'She's fine, thanks,' Arthit says automatically. It is the lie he always tells.
Rose turns to the balcony. 'Really, Miaow, he's almost handsome.'
'I know,' Miaow says. She throws a look at Rose and then turns away again.
'I'm in your way here,' Arthit says. He reaches into the pocket of the plaid pants and pulls out one of his business cards. On the other side is the name 'Clarissa Ulrich' in that same disciplined handwriting, followed by a phone number. 'Promise me you'll call tomorrow?'
'Promise,' Rafferty says, but Arthit is looking past him.
Rafferty turns to see Superman glowering at them from the door to the hallway. He is shining clean, his gleaming straight black hair falling below his shoulders. Except for the one swollen eye, Rafferty would not have recognized him. He glances sharply at Arthit, and his nostrils flare as he smells cop. Just as quickly, his eyes skitter away toward the balcony.
Miaow takes one look at him and bursts into tears.
The boy drills her with a glare and crosses the room toward her, his posture rigid. If he had spines, Rafferty thinks, they would be bristling. But Rose was right; he is handsome, even though the new blue clothes hang on him in folds. He steps out onto the balcony, and Miaow straightens without rising. He sits beside her, only inches away. Miaow wipes her face fiercely with a palm and resumes poking at the fire. The two of them sit identically, knees up and narrow backs curved, with six inches of air between them. To Rafferty's eyes, something about the effortless way they share the space suggests an old married couple.
'I know that kid from somewhere,' Arthit says. He's wearing his policeman's face.
On the balcony Miaow curls herself against him as though he were much larger than she and she could shelter herself beneath his arm. Rose watches them gravely, doing emotional arithmetic in her head. Whatever the answer might be, Rafferty knows he has no chance of reaching it on his own. It's a calculus he hasn't mastered.
Arthit touches his arm. 'Call Clarissa tomorrow,' he says again. Then he turns to study the boy.
'He's fine when he's with me,' Rose says in Thai. They are sitting in the living room, surrounded by the ruins of a dinner that even Rafferty, who cooked it, has to admit was appalling. The children had sat shoulder to shoulder on the balcony, talking in whispers while Rose carried on a bright stream of chatter, not one word of which Rafferty remembers. When everyone reached a consensus that the endless evening could be abandoned, Superman retreated into Miaow's room without even saying good night.
'He bit you,' Rafferty reminds her.
'Only once. He was just keeping in practice.' Rose rummages through her enormous leather handbag for the ever-present Marlboro Lights. She pulls out a fresh pack of the local bootlegs, complete with its oversize black death's-head, and uses a disposable plastic lighter to burn off the cellophane at one corner of the pack. Then she worries a tiny hole in the foil and taps out a single cigarette. It is an extremely labor-intensive process.
Rafferty watches the routine for the thousandth time. 'Half the Thai women I know open cigarettes that way,' he says, 'and I've never been able to figure out why.'
'When you arrived here, you smoked,' Rose reminds him, lighting up.
'I actually recall things that far back, Rose,' he says. 'It's the short-term memory that's going.'
'And when you went into a bar, you put the pack on the table in front of you, wide open the American way, with a great big hole in it. What happened then?'
'Women hit me up for cigarettes,' Rafferty says.
'Every girl in the bar. Even the ones who didn't smoke. It's all part of getting as much as possible from the farang. That's what that whole life is about.'
'But the way you open them-'
'It just makes it harder for people to take them away from me,' she says. 'These things cost money.'
Money is a sore subject with Rose, whose earnings took a vertical nosedive when she quit dancing go-go and went into cleaning apartments. Now she is trying to start a cleaning business, recruiting women from the bars who are either too old to attract customers or just want out of the life. It's slow going. The women may want to quit the bars, but for years most of them have never washed anything but their hair. Even with occasional help from Rafferty-he put up eight hundred dollars, one-fifth of his savings account, for 20 percent of the business-Rose has intermittent bouts of despair.
'So the boy only bit you once,' Rafferty says, changing the subject. 'I suppose that's encouraging.'
'It's not women he has a problem with.' She blows a funnel of smoke with enormous satisfaction.
'Who knows who he has a problem with? Given that he's probably killed somebody and he's alone with Miaow in her room right now.'
'They're friends,' Rose says soothingly. 'You think too much.'
'The inevitable Thai response. My daughter's shut up in a room with an incipient homicidal maniac who's got an aura like a forest fire, and you tell me I think too much.'
'Miaow is tough,' Rose says. 'She got along without you for years, and now you're right here in the next room
