Breathing Water Read online

  Thirty-five minutes later, Rafferty discovers he’s in luck. Both 1993 and 1994 have been computerized and cross-indexed. It takes him less than an hour to find fires.

  Five show promise. Two of them are the most melancholy of all crimes, the burning of a slum that had the misfortune to occupy land earmarked for more profitable purposes. People died in one of these fires. Both had been euphemistically designated as accidental. Then there are two house fires that destroyed or damaged the homes of the powerful. Nobody died, so the fires were probably just attention-getters. The fifth is a factory conflagration, a virtual explosion of highly flammable materials in a facility that turned out stuffed animals for an American toy maker. The fire had happened around 3:00 A.M. during a “ghost shift,” a shift the American company knew nothing about. After the workers on the night shift left, the ghost-shift workers were brought in to use inferior materials to bootleg identical animals for direct sale at the bazaars of Asia. One of the differences between the superior and the inferior materials was that the inferior materials weren’t fireproofed.

  The fire killed one hundred twenty-one people. The factory’s windows were barred, and the iron doors had been locked from the outside. People had been stacked in front of the doors in smoldering piles, like kindling. Some had died with their arms protruding between the bars on the windows, reaching frantically for the world. The company that had rented the factory to the Americans had proved to be a shell corporation owned by another shell corporation. No one who supervised the ghost shift had been found. No one had ever been charged.

  Rafferty prints out all five stories. Each of the pieces ultimately dithers off into the vague language the Thai police use to describe their lack of progress in an investigation that’s aimed directly at somewhere they’re not going to be allowed to go. And there’s no doubt there are heavyweights behind at least some of the fires. The slums were burned to make way for buildings, the houses probably burned as warnings, and the toy factory burned through inhuman stupidity, coupled with greed for yet more profit.

  The odds were good that Pan had been involved in one of them. And Rafferty would guess it was one of the ones that involved death, given the magnitude of the favors he had been granted.

  Rafferty had misquoted Balzac: Behind every great fortune is a great crime. Pan’s fortune might have begun in fire.

  THE TIME CRAWLS past.

  Arthit refuses to go home early. He doesn’t want to explain to Noi that he has effectively been suspended from the force. She’ll take the blame, knowing that his work is the only thing he has now. She doesn’t need the guilt.

  So he does something he’s never been good at: He wastes time. He’s been busy his entire adult life. He doesn’t take vacations—something he regrets now; he should have taken Noi to Hawaii, to Los Angeles, to Tahiti—somewhere that would have made her happy. He should have done a million things, but he didn’t. He was who he was, and she had loved him—she still loves him—anyway.

  He spends half an hour trying out pens in a stationery store, writing the names of everyone he knows, including Noi’s doctors. He browses shelves of books he wouldn’t read if they materialized one morning under his pillow. He walks through unfamiliar neighborhoods, seeing some of Bangkok’s remaining small villages, seeing how the people stiffen and grow quiet at the sight of his uniform. Tasting the bitterness in the back of his throat that it should be so.

  He thumbs through stacks of bootleg DVDs, eyed nervously by sidewalk vendors who yanked the albums of pornography out of sight at his approach. To his immense surprise, he finds a film by Buster Keaton, Sherlock Jr., that he’s never seen. There it is, sandwiched in between more usual titles like Terminator 48 and Revolving Door of the Dead. Noi loves Keaton and his modern disciple, Jackie Chan. When he tries to pay for the movie, the vendor waves his money off, but Arthit takes a thousand-baht note, puts it on the table, and slams a DVD case on top of it, harder than he had intended to. With the Keaton in a plastic bag, he trudges off, ashamed to be dressed as a policeman.

  He thinks about calling Rafferty, but what would he say? He doesn’t know how to ask for help, and even if he did, he can’t imagine what help Rafferty could offer. Rafferty has more than enough to deal with now. Struck by the thought, he stops and dials Kosit.

  “How’s Poke doing?” he asks.

  “You mean other than being outmatched and outweighed and not having any idea what to do about it?”

  Arthit says, “Right.”

  “This is stupid,” Kosit says. “You’re worried about Poke, and Poke’s worried about you. Why don’t you talk to each other?”

  “Because I can’t help him.”

  “And vice versa. So let me make a suggestion.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Get drunk together. Get drunk and sloppy and say a bunch of stuff you’ll regret tomorrow. You’ll both feel better.”

  “Go catch a crook,” Arthit says, and hangs up.

  But the talk has lifted his spirits slightly. He dials Rafferty’s cell and gets no answer. He checks his watch—4:45. Close enough, and he’s got the Buster Keaton to distract her from the fact that he’s half an hour early.

  When he goes into the house, he automatically enters it his new way. The house is essentially a rectangle. The front door opens directly into the living room, which stretches the full width of the house. To the right is the hallway that leads to the two bedrooms and the bathrooms that adjoin them. The hallway ends in the kitchen. To the left is the dining room, which opens into a small breakfast nook that in turn opens into the kitchen. For the past few months, since Noi’s pain took its quantum leap, he’s gone to the left, through the dining room, so he won’t wake her if she’s asleep.

  He kicks off his shoes just inside the front door and pads through the silent living room, smelling the lemon scent of the spray wax Noi uses anywhere there’s a square foot of exposed wood. Without slowing down, he drops the Keaton DVD, still in its plastic bag, next to the cascade of unopened mail on the dining-room table, and goes through the nook and into the kitchen. As he comes into the warm, yellow room, as he unbuckles his gun belt and puts it on the table, his stockinged foot hits something slippery, and he looks down at the floor to see a spill of flour.

  His heart literally stops.

  Then it kicks itself back into life with tremendous force, and he stands there with it thumping in his ears, staring down at a sifting of flour across the tile, as clean and innocent as a dusting of snow.

  Feeling like a man walking against a stiff wind, Arthit forces himself across the kitchen and into the hallway, where he stops, two steps in, and looks at the envelope taped to the closed bedroom door.

  33

  If He’s a Friend, He’ll Wait

  The tail is wearing a yellow shirt.

  He’s been back there for blocks now. Rafferty has glimpsed him three times as he did experimental zigzags between boulevards and sois. He thinks it might be time to get a look at his shadow’s face, for future reference.

  The office building is unremarkable, neither new nor old, certainly not architecturally distinctive, and there’s not a soul in it Rafferty knows. He enters the lobby anyway, walking with the brisk purpose of someone who actually has a destination. Without looking around, he pushes the call button for the elevator and waits. When it comes, he turns to face front as he punches the button for the sixth floor. He doesn’t see the yellow shirt as the doors close.

  He gets off on the sixth floor, trots down a couple of flights on the fire stairs, and hits the button for the elevator again. He rides it down to the underground parking garage, which opens not onto Silom but onto a small cross street. Up the slope of the exit ramp and then a quick right, away from Silom. A short jog brings him to an alley, which he takes to the next little soi, one that will lead him back down to Silom. He crosses it and takes it to Silom, then crosses that and waits on the sidewalk, watching the building he just went into.

  Looking for someone else who’s watc
hing it.

  And almost misses him, because he’s looking for yellow, and what he finally sees is navy blue, a dark T-shirt that says BAJA CALIFORNIA on it. The man in blue is short but broad-shouldered, with medium-length hair that’s been parted in the middle and then gooped with mousse to make it fall in spiky curls over his forehead. A small soul patch clings to his lower lip with all the uncertainty of a misplaced comma.

  No yellow shirt. Is he being double-teamed?

  Rafferty watches for a few more minutes, just to make certain that Yellow Shirt isn’t around, then turns and follows the flow on the sidewalk until he gets to a recessed doorway, leading into a shop that sells fantasy underwear. Rose laughed out loud at the display window once, although Rafferty still sneaks a look at it now and then.

  He punches a number into his cell, waits a moment, and then says, “Floyd. It’s Poke. I need a favor.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” says Floyd Preece.

  “It’s not a conventional favor, Floyd. There’s money in it.” He looks down the street and doesn’t see either the blue shirt or the yellow one. Blue Shirt worries him a little, because he’d gone unnoticed the whole time Rafferty was isolating Mr. Yellow. The last thing he needs right now is to be followed by someone with real skills.

  “How much?” Floyd Preece is a freelance journalist hanging on in Bangkok by his badly chewed fingernails. He’s a first-class investigative reporter, but his talent is significantly outweighed by an avid enthusiasm for controlled substances and a total lack of interpersonal skills. Preece has never crossed a bridge he didn’t burn behind him, and he’s now living in a thin-towel, short-time hotel and maybe six months away from having to teach English, which is the wrong end of the rainbow altogether. Nobody in Bangkok will work with him, but he’s got the gifts Rafferty needs right now.

  “If you get me what I want, five hundred U.S. If you don’t, two-fifty for trying.”

  “Sounds low.”

  “You don’t even know what it is yet.”

  “Still sounds low.” There is a pause and the scraping of one of the wooden matches Preece favors, and Rafferty listens to the man suck a cigar into life. “You landed the whale, didn’t you? Mr. Pick His Nose in Public himself. Got to be a big fat advance there. How much did you get?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t checked. Okay, a thousand if you get it, five hundred if you don’t, and if that’s not enough, I’ve got other numbers in my speed dial.”

  “I’ll need the five up front.” Another big, wet inhale, followed by a muted cough.

  “You’ll get half of it, later tonight or tomorrow morning. I’ll call and tell you where we can meet. Have you got a pencil?”

  “Sure. But I need—”

  “I don’t care what you need, what you’re getting is two-fifty up front. Now, take this down and get it right, okay? I haven’t got time to repeat it.” Up the street, maybe two-thirds of a block away, he catches a glimpse of the yellow shirt. He backs farther into the doorway and gives Preece the dates and details of the fires. “I’m most interested in the slum fire where there were fatalities and in the factory.”

  “This for the book?”

  “That doesn’t concern you—”

  “—’cause if it is, you’re really pitching me low.”

  “Yes or no, Floyd? Before I count to three. One…two…”

  “Okay, okay. Jeez. I thought we were friends.”

  Rafferty says, “You did? Well, good, then this will clarify things. What I want is everything you can get, but especially this: Who built the new buildings on the sites of the slums that burned, and who owned the factory? Both before and after the fire, if there was enough of it left to sell.” The yellow shirt is gone again.

  “I remember it,” Preece said. “Went out there, tried to get some pix to sell. Brought along a stuffed bunny, put it on the dirt in the foreground, and shot past it. Used a wide-angle for depth of field. Like irony, you know? Building was solid concrete. Not much damage, except to the stuff inside. And the people, of course.”

  “Right, the people.”

  “If it turns out the fire has anything to do with your guy, you should look at these pix. I’d let you have a couple for the right price. Great story angle, you know? Up from the flames and all that.”

  “Listen, I also want to know if anyone died in either of those fires who shouldn’t have been there. Somebody with some rank, somebody who didn’t belong.”

  “Got it.”

  “Tell you what,” Rafferty says, feeling a prickle of guilt. Preece is almost at the stage where he’ll have to start reusing toothpicks. “We’ll make this a sliding scale. I’ll pay you the thousand if you get me the basics. Anything past that, I’ll pay you more, up to a total of twenty-five hundred.”

  “Why?” Preece’s voice is sharpened by suspicion.

  “Because we’re friends. And because I’m in a hurry. I need this like day after tomorrow at the latest, but call me anytime you get anything good. And, Floyd. Be a little careful, okay?”

  “Oh, come on.” Another draw on the cigar. “Bangkok is my beat.”

  “Fine. But keep your eyes open.” Rafferty disconnects.

  At the edge of the doorway, he looks back up the street. No followers he can identify. He turns to continue in the direction he’d been going in, and there’s Mr. Yellow, flanked by two others. Both of the others are wearing suit jackets, and their hands are thrust into their jacket pockets.

  “You haven’t been good,” says the man in yellow.

  “Do we know each other?” Rafferty asks.

  “Good question,” the man in yellow says. “You know how a scientist looks at a bug? He gets to know the bug pretty well, but does the bug know him?”

  “Shoot me,” Rafferty says, “but spare me the metaphors.”

  “Come on. We’ve got to talk. You walk next to me, okay? And Mr. Left and Mr. Right will follow us so they can shoot you and disappear quickly if they have to.” He puts a hand on Rafferty’s arm, which Rafferty shrugs off, but to no effect—the man grabs him again.

  Rafferty says, “I am so fucking sick of this.”

  “You’ve been making me look bad,” the man says. He’s average height for a Thai, maybe five foot nine, a little meaty, with a receding hairline that gives him a thinker’s forehead. A pair of round, black, resolutely opaque sunglasses straddles a shapeless, fleshy nose. A few hairs straggle despairingly across his upper lip as though they’ve slowed to wait for the others to catch up.

  “Hard to believe anyone could make you look bad,” Rafferty says. “Where are we going?”

  “Right here.” The man opens the door to a large black SUV that Rafferty recognizes, his stomach clenching like a fist, as the one that had been idling in front of Pan’s Mesopotamian wall. “Get in,” Yellow Shirt says, holding wide the rear door.

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Okay, then, we’ll kill you.”

  “And if I get in?”

  The man in the yellow shirt smiles. “Wait and see.”

  Rafferty climbs up onto the step that will take him into the SUV’s backseat, and his cell phone vibrates in his pocket. “Hold it,” he says, pulling it out.

  The man’s hand is immediately on Rafferty’s wrist. “Put that back. Now.”

  The readout says ARTHIT.

  “Whoever it is,” the man in the yellow shirt says, “you can talk to him later.” And he plucks the phone out of Rafferty’s hand. It’s a very fast, very precise move.

  Rafferty says, “Hey,” but someone pushes him hard, between the shoulder blades, and he lurches face-first through the door, cracking his shins on the second step. He lands on the leather backseat and is pushing himself up when the man in the yellow shirt, who is now in the front seat, points a small silvery automatic at him over the seat back.

  “Just sit up,” he says. Rafferty sees his own face reflected in the dark glasses. He looks frightened. “In the middle. Don’t do anything stupid.”

&nbs
p; Rafferty does as he’s told, and seconds later Mr. Left and Mr. Right climb into the car on either side of him. For a moment they sit there in silence, and Rafferty listens to the engine ticking as it cools. The tinted windows make them invisible from the sidewalk, but he doesn’t think they’d have shut down the engine if the plan called for them to shove a dead man out of the car and peel off into traffic.

  “You’re not taking us seriously,” says Yellow Shirt. He looks at the phone. “Who’s Arthit?”

  “A friend.”

  “If he’s a friend, he’ll wait. I’m running out of patience with you. We called to tell you not to write the book. We did that little show outside Pan’s place. But here you are, running around and talking to people. As I said, it makes me look bad. So here we are again.” He waits.

  Rafferty feels like the slowest person in the car. It hadn’t occurred to him that he was dealing with the other side. He’d half figured that the ones who warned him away from the book had been Pan’s guys, despite Pan’s denial, and that they’d be put on hold after he and Pan had their little talk. “What do you want me to say?” he asks.

  “Nothing. And I want you to do nothing, and I mean nothing. No more meetings, no more conversations, no more research. This is the third time we’ve had to interact. The fourth time you’ll die. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you right-handed or left?”

  There is no way to know how to answer this question. Rafferty makes a blind choice. “Left.”

  “See how you are?” Yellow Shirt says sadly. “I’ve been watching you, remember? Look at this gun.” He lifts it from the seat back and moves it slowly to Rafferty’s right. Rafferty is tracking it with his eyes, watching the light through the front windshield glint off the barrel, when Mr. Left shifts his weight, and then something cracks down onto the muscle between Rafferty’s neck and his left shoulder. His arm goes numb, and as his head jerks toward Mr. Left and he registers the blackjack in the man’s hand, the same thing happens to his right shoulder.