"Let me explain," Rafferty says. A rock grazes his ear, and then there are children climbing his back, beating at him, and he goes down beneath them. The world is a concrete floor and a crowd of dirty shoes. Pain ignites along his spine.
The shot almost blows out his eardrums.
The children back off, and Rafferty looks up to see Superman brandishing the gun, aiming it in the general direction of the kids. "Leave him alone," the boy says.
The gun clatters to the floor in front of Rafferty's face. The clip lands next to it.
"You can have it back now," Superman says with contempt, and the children turn and walk away. Sauntering, not running. At the door to the garage, the boy turns to look at him. "I'll be back," he says. "For Miaow." Then they are gone.
Rafferty is still for a long while. Getting to his feet requires a set of careful stages, moving one thing at a time. It seems to take an eternity to limp blinking into the bright day. The children are gone. He mops the blood from his face and flags a taxi, bleeding, stinking with fear, and aching in every joint. He ignores the driver's eyes in the mirror. When the elevator doors open on his floor, he has to lean against the hallway wall for another long moment before he can force himself to cross the hall and open the door of his apartment, where he finds himself looking into the bottomless eyes of Madame Wing.
42
Toadface and Skeletor flank her wheelchair like a pair of mismatched tutelary figures guarding a throne. Madame Wing raises her chin.
"You stink," Madame Wing says.
"Yeah, but I can take a shower," Rafferty replies shakily. "What are your options?"
She perches in the chair, more batlike than ever, sharp knees drawn up to her chest. The inevitable blanket covers her legs, but her feet protrude from the bottom edge. She has prehensile feet-long, thin toes with narrow, yellowish nails that extend far enough to curl downward, long enough to break if she had to walk. They are the ugliest feet Rafferty has ever seen. It gives him a cold twinge of comfort that she has had to live with such hideous feet.
Skeletor-Nick-leaves her side to circle him, keeping his distance, and shuts the door. He positions himself with his back to it.
Rafferty leans against the wall, his joints too loose and his bones too heavy, his body too big and bulky to move. Pain radiates out from a dozen places where he was hit. "This isn't exactly what I had in mind," he says.
"Change of plans," says Toadface.
"So I see." Rafferty draws a deep breath and blows it out. "How you doing, you merciless old bitch?" he asks Madame Wing.
She knocks the insult away with a knot of knuckles. "Where is the man who took my money?"
"You'll never know." He can't tell the truth. He knows she can reach Chouk in jail, as easily as stretching out a hand and slapping him.
"Oh," she says comfortably, "I think I will."
"Yeah? What's the plan? You going to kiss me?"
She almost smiles. "We're going to wait," she says.
"For what?"
Madame Wing slips a hand beneath the blanket and comes out with a piece of paper. He can see the bright colors through the back of the sheet even before she turns it around to face him. It is one of Miaow's new drawings, a family group of four: Rafferty, Rose, Superman, and herself. It seems to him to have been months since she drew it. "Until the children come home," she says.
There is a hot pressure in Rafferty's chest that he recognizes as terror. "They won't come home," he says.
"Really." She is undisturbed. "And why not?"
"The boy's gone," he says. "Miaow won't leave school until I go get her."
"The school called," she says. "About three minutes ago, because you hadn't shown up. And one of these gentlemen told them to put her in a taxi and send her here. And they will. The Thais are not careful people. They put too much faith in the future."
"It's too late for you," he says.
"Is it?" There is not a trace of interest in her face.
"The pictures. They're already at the Bangkok Post. They'll be on the Internet by this time tomorrow."
"I'm sure they'll be popular." She drops Miaow's drawing to the floor. It lands right side up near the wheel of her chair, the bright, cheerful picture facing Rafferty. "The Post won't publish them. The laws of libel are almost the only laws the Thais enforce. What do they show? A young woman. She could be anyone."
"You underestimate your ugliness."
Her whole head snaps forward, quick as a cobra. "You have no idea what I've survived," she says. "Do you honestly think you can make an end of me? You, with your cheap apartment, your sad little life. I am as far beyond you as the stars."
"Those whom the gods would destroy," Rafferty says, "they first give weak dialogue."
She does not even pause. "You will disappear so completely that no one will even bother to look. Who would miss you? Especially since the child will be gone, too." She rests the terrible hands on her knees, a bundle of brown twigs, the nest of some predatory bird.
"You guys really on board for this?" Rafferty asks. "You going to hurt a kid?"
"If necessary," says Nick.
"And you," Rafferty says to Chut. "You have a daughter of your own."
Chut starts to reply, then stops. He looks away.
"She paying you a lot?"
Nick says, "A lot more than we could have gotten from selling her."
"The only person in the world who can identify me is the man you are hiding," Madame Wing says. "Tell me where he is, and we'll let the child live."
"I wouldn't shit on you if you needed the ballast."
"Be as brave as you like. Do you know how many thousand times I've been through this? It's always the same. I can predict every stage you'll go through. First you'll refuse to tell us anything. Then you'll lie. When the lies don't stop us, you'll tell us what we want to know. Then, at the last, you'll say anything-anything-to make us stop. You'll tell us where your mother is. You'll beg us to hurt the little girl instead of you. Do you think there were no brave men and women in Cambodia? There were thousands of them. Do you know how many of them refused to talk to me in the end? None of them. Not one."
"I know what 'none' means."
"Save yourself the pain," she says, settling back in the chair. "In the end it will be the same anyway, except that you will have suffered and the child will die. Where is he?"
"On an airplane."
Her eyes widen and narrow again. "A lie. I'm not going to bargain any further. I've given you all I'm going to give. A quick answer from you and we'll be gone before the child arrives. Once she comes through that door, she's dead, I promise you."
Rafferty turns to stare at Chut, who averts his eyes. "These guys haven't got the stones for it."
"It's remarkable," she says complacently, "how many people turn out to have the stones, as you say. There was no shortage of willing hands in Tuol Sleng. It's like heroism. You have no idea what people can do until they do it. One of my best helpers was a boy who cried at sad movies."
"He's on a plane," Rafferty says again. "On his way to Hong Kong."
A tightening of the skin over the bones of her face. "Using what for money?"
"Obviously, yours."
Madame Wing looks at the others. "Does anyone here believe that?"
"He's working for free?" Nick says. The thin lips twist. "I don't think so."
"Listen," Rafferty says. "He's gone. He can't hurt you now. Killing me is just going to complicate your life. The police-"
"The police?" She waves a twisted hand at Nick and Chut. "The police are already here. They've been taking care of me for years. The police are not a problem. The problem is that you're not taking this seriously enough. Nobody really believes they're going to be hurt. They think we'll stop at some point before it gets awful." She leans toward him, boring in on him with those light-gathering eyes. "But we don't." She turns to the skeletal Nick. "Remove his trousers."