“Yes, sir. I know where his wife is.”
“Good, good. You’re a valuable asset, Ton.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The general hangs up.
Ton puts the phone back into the the drawer and replaces the false bottom. He closes the drawer and realizes he forgot to put the files back, so he swears between his teeth, opens the drawer again, and drops the files into it. He is conscious of a prickling of sweat at his hairline.
He wishes he could talk to his wife.
When he’s finished straightening the files, he sits looking down at the open drawer for a full minute. Then he picks up his phone, scrolls the rest of the way down, and presses “call.” He waits, drumming the fingers of his left hand on the desk. Then he says, “Listen. I need one of them, either the woman or the girl, to be able to talk. It may be the only way to bring Rafferty in. But here’s the important thing: I can’t figure why they’re at the factory unless Pan’s there.”
“Okay,” Captain Teeth says.
“If he’s there, take him out.”
“You mean-”
“You know what I mean. Take him out, and take out anybody who sees anything. Just leave me one of those females in a condition to talk on the phone.”
Captain Teeth says, “You’re the boss.”
“And one more thing. If Pan goes down tonight, we have to talk about what happens to the guys who are with you.”
“Well,” Captain Teeth says, “I’m not related to any of them.”
48
The generator sounds like it has a respiratory disease.
It sputters, coughs, hiccups. Then it makes a phlegmy, ratcheting, throat-clearing sound for ten seconds or so, and the whole pathology starts over.
It’s so loud, Boo thinks, that he could ride in on horseback and no one would hear him.
The big black Mercedes sits empty at the end of the cracked drive, a car-shaped hole in the darkness, its motor ticking as it cools. Boo keeps himself to the darkest areas, moving from the shadow of one bush to another to avoid the thin, chilly-looking moonlight. The ground underfoot is littered with chunks of concrete, jagged-edged, irregular, heavy enough to pitch him facedown if he trips on one. Spiderwebs lace the spaces between the weeds, fat spiders straddling the centers, waiting patiently for blood. Boo isn’t particularly afraid of spiders, but he doesn’t like walking face-first into one.
And the place smells as if the hair of a million women was burned inside.
Boo can stroll the darkest, narrowest alley in Bangkok on a moonless night without so much as a bump in his pulse rate, but this weedy field with its blackened, abandoned factory makes the hair on his arms stand up. The generator goes into a paroxysm of coughing, and suddenly there is light on the bottom floor of the building.
Or is there? The interior is so black that there’s nothing for the light to bounce off; it’s like looking into an infinite space. If it weren’t for the long rectangles of illumination spilling onto the weeds through the doors and windows and shining on the newly visible profile of the Mercedes, Boo’s not sure he’d even register the light. But he knows one thing: Light or no light, the place doesn’t feel any friendlier.
With the noise of the generator clattering in his ears, he doesn’t hear the person behind him, and when the hand lands on his arm, he goes straight up into the air and comes down facing the opposite way, one hand clutching a five-inch knife that’s normally sheathed inside his right front pocket. When he sees who it is, he gasps in relief several times and then knots her T-shirt in his hand to drag her down into a crouch, out of sight from the building.
Da says, “We have to leave.”
“Be quiet. Rafferty’s coming with the cops. We’ll argue then.”
“Now,” she says. “We have to leave now.”
Boo looks back at the building, sees nothing inside the big black room, just the sharp-edged rectangles of light falling through the door and windows. He registers that the windows are barred with thick rods of what looks like iron. “Why?” he whispers. “Why do we have to leave?”
“This place is full of ghosts,” Da says. “They’re everywhere.”
“Don’t be silly,” Boo says, feeling the goose bumps pop out on his arms.
Da says, and her voice is shaking, “They’re on fire.”
“Well, yeah,” Boo says, keeping his own voice steady. “Look at the place. Got burned to shit.”
“Please. These are not ghosts you can talk to. They want blood. They’ve been waiting for blood.”
“Go across the street,” Boo says. “They’ll stay here. Ghosts don’t just wander around. I need to see what’s happening in there.”
“You have to come with me,” Da says. “I can’t have Peep here. If we stay, there will be blood. There will be.”
“Then go, go. Get out of here. Get Peep across the street.”
Da starts to reply, but her voice splinters into “Ohhhhhhh” as a figure inside walks past the door.
“Shut up,” Boo hisses. “It’s just the fat guy, Pan. The little one’s got to be around somewhere. He was driving. He’s not in the car, so he’s somewhere else. Look, he’s only a guy.” Then he puts a hand on her shoulder and says, barely louder than a thought, “Don’t move.”
Dr. Ravi comes through the door of the factory and picks his way down the driveway to the Mercedes. He opens the trunk and leans in, and when he straightens up, he has something coiled over one shoulder and bulky objects dangling from each hand. Inside the factory door, he puts down the things in his hands and pulls the coil off his shoulder and drops it to the floor.
“Lights,” Boo says. “And cord. Electrical cord.”
But Dr. Ravi is already on his way back to the car. This time he removes long pieces of something that looks like pipe. Once inside again, he takes two of the lengths of pipe and begins to screw them together. Then Pan appears at the door and picks up the long coil of electrical cord. He unloops it, backing away until he is out of sight.
“What are they doing?” Boo whispers. “Are they going to light the place? And why are they doing this themselves? Pan’s rich. There must be a hundred people who could do this for him.” He squeezes Da’s shoulder. “Go now. Tell the kid at the gate-his name is Tee-to come up here. I want him to use that video camera.”
Da puts both hands on his arm. “I’m telling you. You should go, too.”
“Ghosts leave me alone,” Boo says. “I’ve come too close to dying, too often. They look at me and know it’s just a matter of time.”
“You don’t know anything,” Da says furiously. He hears the brush rustling for a couple of seconds, and then the generator drowns out the sounds of her movement.
A moment later Pan appears, pushing something black and shapeless across the floor, right to left. Things-pieces of it-fall off as he shoves, and he kicks the fragments out of the way. And then he reappears, moving in the opposite direction, picking up things as he goes, and ten or twelve heartbeats later he carries an armload of shapeless objects past the door. Whatever he’s arranging, it’s being set up on the side of the room that’s to the left of the door.
Boo looks over his shoulder just in time to see Da slip through the gate, heading across the street. Other than the gate, there seems to be no way out; as far as Boo can see, the fence, at least three meters tall, surrounds the overgrown plot of ground on which the burned factory is centered. He’s thinking, Keep the path to the gate clear, when he hears the boy who’d been stationed at the gate, Tee, coming up behind him. Without looking back, Boo says, “You stay here. I’m going to check the window to the left over there.”
Tee says, “I don’t like it here.”
“Well,” Boo says, “you’ve got a lot of company. Try to keep me in sight, but don’t let them see you.”
“Yeah, but…”