"It's always money," she says. "Why do you think they work the bars in the first place?"
"Come on. All the guys hear the same stories: Mama's sick, Papa drinks, little brother has to go to school, the buffalo skinned its knee. You know as well as I do, half the time Mama spends the money on a color television set or a year-round Christmas tree because she likes the way it sparkles."
Rose's chin comes up. "So?"
"Not exactly life-and-death issues."
"To these girls Mama's color TV is the least they owe her. It's about family, Poke, not that I expect a farang to understand that. If a child can give something to the family, that makes merit, and it also makes Mama happy."
"So we're in a world where this makes sense somehow: blow jobs for a permanent Christmas tree."
She waves a hand as though she could scatter the words across the room. "It's not really about money. It's about failure," she says. "My failure. I can't get them work."
His irritation dissipates instantly. "Rose," he says.
She balls her fists, crumpling the papers. "Don't comfort me. I really couldn't stand to be comforted right now."
"You're just getting started," he says. "You can't expect it to work right away."
"They're hungry, Poke. And, worse than that, their families are hungry. Whether it's for food or a new leather couch. Say whatever you want, you have to remember there are brothers and sisters who need to go to school. Those kids are real. Papa's drinking problems are real. And in the meantime these girls are hungry."
"They can't work if they're hungry," Rafferty says. "How many of them are out there?"
"Thirteen. If Fon and the others haven't already left."
"Three hundred dollars each," Rafferty says, reaching for the wad in his pocket. "That's thirty-nine hundred dollars. Tell them it's an advance." He begins to count out the bills.
She watches him count for a moment, her eyes on the bills. "This money," she says. "This is why you're carrying the gun?"
"Mmmm. Yes and no."
She takes a step back. "Well, keep it. I mean, give it back. Put the gun away and let's just go back to the way we were."
"There," he says, finishing the count. "I can't give it back. The woman who's paying me is not someone I care to disappoint."
"Well, I don't want it. They'll never be able to repay it."
"Yes, they will. They'll be working in two weeks, most of them."
"Poke, you're not listening. I can't do this."
"That's part two of my plan," he says. "The advances are part one. Part two is to get you a partner."
"A partner." Her tone is flat, and she locks eyes with him, leans toward him, and takes a quick sniff. "Have you been drinking?"
"I'll explain it all later." He indicates the papers under her arm. "What are those?"
She has forgotten she had them. "They were on the floor. The paper tray on your fax is still broken."
"I'm going to ask the boy to try to fix it. Hank Morrison says the trick is to make them feel useful."
She hands him the papers, and he gives her the money. She glances down at it and shakes her head, and then she throws her arms around his neck and kisses him on the mouth. When she leaves the room, she is almost running.
Rafferty slips the remaining money back into his pocket. It is significantly slimmer than before. If his spontaneously generated plan for the partnership doesn't work out, Rose's business could leave him completely broke. He licks his lips, a little nervously, and tastes her lipstick, and the anxiety eases.
The faxed pages are from Arthit. The first is a Bangkok Police Department cover sheet addressed to LIEUTENANT PHILIP RAFFERTY, RCMP, probably using Poke's full name and giving him this entirely spurious rank for the benefit of the fax operators who actually sent the message. He scans the pages quickly and then reads them carefully.
Claus Ulrich lacks a police record and has never been mentioned prominently in the Bangkok newspapers. On the other hand, Immigration definitely records two Claus Ulrichs of the same age but with different middle names, one Australian and one British. Both passports have been scanned by Immigration multiple times over the past dozen years or so, coming from points of origin scattered around Southeast Asia-the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia. The most recent record of the British Claus Ulrich is a departure. Two weeks and three days later, the Australian Claus Ulrich reentered the country and has not left it. That was five months ago.
"So he's here," Rafferty says. "One way or another."
There is less hard data on Madame Wing-to whom Arthit gives the cryptic designation "unknown Chinese woman"-but the single paragraph is rich in implication. She had purchased the house in 1980 for the baht equivalent of $325,000, a tidy sum, especially since it was made in a single cash payment. The walls and gate-and, for all Rafferty knows, a moat full of crocodiles-were added almost immediately afterward with the appropriate permits, a euphemism for bribes. No police record, but several complaints of servant abuse have gone uninvestigated and eventually been dismissed. The source of her income is listed as "unknown."
It doesn't take much reading between the lines to see that Madame Wing is among the privileged few, those who are immune from police interference for anything short of mass murder. Arthit won't even put her name in a fax. Complaints are filed, but no one follows up. Either it's the weight of sheer wealth or she's connected. Or-third choice-she's paying through the nose.
If she were paying the police for immunity, though, wouldn't she have turned to them when her safe was burgled? Why involve a foreigner who doesn't even have official status in a matter that is apparently so important? Did the safe contain something even her protectors can't know about-something that would make the price of their services prohibitive?
That would have to be something, he thinks, with massive juju.
He draws a deep breath, wipes away the last of Rose's lipstick and licks it off his finger, and leaves the apartment to go terrorize somebody.
22
The bang the door makes when it strikes the wall is louder than the cannon in the 1812 Overture and has even more impact than Rafferty had meant it to have. Its effect on the woman behind the desk at Bangkok Domestics is galvanic: She goes two feet straight into the air and lands standing. Now she waits, with her fingertips over her mouth and her back to the filing cabinet, keeping the desk between them.
"You lied to me." Rafferty grabs the desk by its edge and tilts it a couple of feet, spilling papers to the floor. He lets it drop with a loud thump that prompts a second instant levitation, this one backward as well as vertical, driving her all the way to the wall. "You told me Ulrich's maid was killed. That's bullshit." The woman's eyes slide past him to the wall and search it frantically. "She's working downstairs. Probably a job you got her. You want to tell me why?"
A little defensive tug downward on the jacket of today's suit, a yellow the color of congealing butter. Her eyes drop to the spill of papers at her feet. "You have no right to speak to me like this."
Rafferty takes a folder from the desk. "Claus Ulrich is probably dead, do you realize that?" He slaps the folder onto the desk on the word "dead." "He's not some impoverished laborer, he's a rich foreigner." Slap, slap. The muscles around her eyes bunch up each time, and her fingernails pick at a peel of skin on her lower lip. "He has an embassy, for Christ's sake." Slap. "What do you think they're going to do? How high do you think the cops are going to jump when they get the call? You think they're going to question you politely, maybe over dinner or something? What kind of trouble do you want to be in anyway?"