"He was?"
"Well, he said he was. That's one reason Tam took the job." She dabs at her eyes with the back of her hand. "Tam said they were both artists."
"Did you tell that to the police?"
"I didn't believe it," she says. "I asked how he could play the violin with a hand that looked like a spider. Tam said he didn't even have fingernails. They'd been pulled out."
"Oh," Rafferty says, putting his own hands in his pockets.
"And his name, that was a lie, too. Chon. It's not even a real name. It sounds like something somebody made up who had heard Thai spoken on the radio." She has worked a fingernail into the seam of the couch cushion and is slowly slitting it open. A little bubble of foam rubber bulges out. "A violin player with a fake name. The Saudi jewels. How could he have been so stupid?" A sob catches in her throat and sends her free hand to the Kleenex box, but the one on top has failed to pop up, and she takes both hands and rips the box in half. Tissues flutter to the floor. "What am I going to do?"
"Do you-" He stops. "Do you have any money?" A fat fold of Madame Wing's fills his pocket.
The sob tails off into a sniffle, followed by a dab at her nose. "Money's no problem. I have a job. I've always had a job. What I don't have is a husband."
"Are there…um, are there children?"
"He was my child." She begins to weep again. "He was my child and my father and my husband. He surrounded me. I don't even know where I am anymore." She grabs a handful of tissues angrily and scrubs her face with them, then balls them up and tosses the wad, hard, at the window. "Are you married?"
"Not at the moment."
"Then you don't know anything," she says, not unkindly.
"I know I can find the man who did this to you."
She looks up at him, evaluating the worth of the offer. He has not taken a chair, although she offered him one. It seems impolite to do anything but stand in the presence of such sorrow. So there he stands, shambling and ill at ease, the duffel bag full of burglar tools sitting heavily at his feet like a sleeping dog. "It won't bring him back."
"No. Nothing will bring him back."
She exhales for what seems like a minute, so long that Rafferty half expects her to disappear. "Why bother, then?"
"Because it's wrong," Rafferty says. "Because he killed your husband and made you unhappy. Because somebody should make him pay."
She shrugs, and it seems to require all her energy. "He'll pay for it in a future life."
"I'd like to make him pay for it in this one. While I'm around to watch."
"Why? What does this mean to you? We don't even know you."
"I'm tired of death. And I'm sick of deaths no one can do anything about. Nobody can take revenge on a wave. It's just a wave. Even if you wanted to for some reason, you couldn't find the water that formed the wave, could you? It's disappeared back into the ocean. But a man isn't a wave." He realizes he has raised his voice and makes a conscious effort to lower it. "You can find a man."
She is still, toying with a new Kleenex. Then, slowly, she tears it in half. "If you say so."
"Do you know where they met?"
"In jail. Tam did something stupid, and they put him in jail. They were in the same cell just before he was released."
"How many in the cell?"
"I don't know. Eight, ten. What difference does it make?"
Rafferty pulls out his notebook. "It could give me a name. When was he in jail? When did he get out? Which jail?"
She closes her eyes, sealing herself off while she works through some private process. Then she sighs deeply and gets up from the couch.
"I'll get my journal," she says.
21
Bangkok, planted atop a river plain, is as flat as a piece of paper. The city slopes up slightly on either side of the river, but the incline is barely visible. The effluent-choked canals that once earned the city a highly misleading reputation as the Venice of the East flow between banks that rarely rise by more than three or four feet over the course of miles. Many of them now are too polluted and stinking to be navigated by anyone except locals in rough wooden flatboats.
In many great cities, the rich live within sight of water or on the heights. In Bangkok the water is likely to have wooden shacks built out over it with holes cut in the floor to serve as toilets. A river view here may mean nothing more than an extra ration of rats. Lacking hills to build upon, the city's rich create height with skyscrapers and then move to the top. An economic map of Bangkok would have to be constructed in three dimensions, with much of the money floating well above ground level.
On his way home from Mai's apartment near Klong Toey, Rafferty's tuk-tuk passes through a misassembled jigsaw puzzle of urban landscapes: one-story cement shops with sliding iron grilles across the front, the chromium glitter of nightlife areas, the occasional placid narrow street lined by trees and the high walls of the wealthy, much like those surrounding Madame Wing. Bright new steel-and-glass apartment houses share a property line with tacked-together wooden slums that look like collections of driftwood. Silom Boulevard, off of which he lives, is a hybrid: a Western-style shopping area packed with restaurants, modern department stores, and expensive boutiques, all reached by threading one's way through the little vendors' booths that crowd the sidewalk, most numerous where Patpong empties into Silom like, Rose might say, a poisoned river. A sharp left takes Rafferty onto his own soi, an aggregate of still-inexpensive apartment houses of which his own, the Lovely Arms, is perhaps the least expensive. But it's the closest thing to a home he's had in the years he's spent chasing himself across Asia to write his books and articles.
It's probably because he does feel so at home there that he fails at first to notice the two men in the corridor when he gets off the elevator. He's pulled out his keys before he registers their presence, and the day suddenly goes very sour indeed.
Two policemen, poised to knock two doors up from his, have turned to look at him. Rafferty tucks his keys into his fist so the points protrude, an impromptu pass at brass knuckles. He gets a better hold on the duffel bag, its weight suddenly reassuring rather than bothersome. There's no way around the fact that these are the cops whose faces and information Arthit faxed him.
"You," one of them says loudly. He's short and fat, with a toad-like face that reminds Rafferty of an Olmec head. Rafferty has no idea what the other one looks like, because he can't get his eyes any higher than the automatic the man has drawn.
"I told you it was 8-A," says the man with the automatic.
As the two of them approach, Rafferty spreads his feet slightly and bends his knees just enough to give him some spring, then wraps his hand more tightly around the duffel's handle. The one with the gun in his hand is thinner than his partner and dirtier, with a face so gaunt it makes Rafferty think of the cartoon character Skeletor. His uniform is smudged with dirt and spots of something that could be blood, hot sauce, or both.
"We're coming in," says the toad-faced one.
"Actually," Rafferty says, "you're not."
"We're the police," says the toad-faced one. "We'll go wherever we like."
Rafferty keeps his eyes on the gun. "At the moment you're just a couple of shitheads who are off the clock," he says. His voice is surprisingly steady. "And if anything happens to me, your own department will be up your assholes before you've had time to loosen your belts."
"Be nice." The fat one with the toad face is doing all the talking. "Just give us the money she gave you and we'll go away."
"She didn't give me any money."