A Nail Through the Heart (4 page)

“Sorry?”

“The child. Miaow’s friend.” She has her business face on, willing away tragedy. This is another thing Thais have that Rafferty doesn’t, this genius for inhabiting the present moment.

“Boy.”

“Size ten, blue,
na
?” As fast as a gambler’s shuffle, she flips through the clothes and comes up with two garments.

Rafferty glances at them and visualizes the filthy rags they will replace. “How long have you been on this street, Tik?”

She pauses halfway through slipping the clothes into a plastic bag and narrows her eyes. “Four…no, five years. Why?”

“Maybe you know the kid.”

She shrugs. “Many kids. Now even more.” Her eyes go past him and settle on something, and Rafferty half turns to see what it is. “You very handsome tonight,” Tik says.

“Clean living. What were you looking at?”

“She gone now.”

He turns to survey the street. “Who?”

“Lady,” Tik says. “
Farang
lady. She look at you and look at you. Because you so handsome. You almost look Thai.”

Rafferty, whose straight black hair and smooth features mirror his mother’s, knows this is a high compliment. “What did she look like?”

Tik shakes her head. “Not so good. Too fat,
na?
Too fat, yellow hair, big nose.”

Hofstedler’s mystery woman. “All
farang
have big noses.”

“This is why you good-looking,” Tik says. “You almost got Asian nose. Also, black hair and eyes. Right color, very nice.”

Rafferty turns to scan the crowd behind him. “And she went where?”

“Toward Superstar Bar. She go fast when you turn around.”

“Life is more interesting than I’d like it to be,” Rafferty says. “So the kid. He’s ten or eleven, real skinny. Got hair that looks like a hundred people spent a year tying knots in it.”

Tik’s mouth widens in distaste. “Not know.” She shakes her head and extends her hand to give him the bag. Her eyes fall on the fold of the sweatshirt and then come up to Rafferty’s. There is a crease between her eyebrows. “Blue?” she says. She shakes the bag as though the child is in it. “He wear blue?”

“Blue as the sky, but dirtier. Head to…um—What in the world is wrong?”

Tik has stepped back, shaking her head vigorously. “Thin,
na?
Blue clothes. Here, on the front—” She sketches a loosely shaped zigzag on her chest.

“That’s him,” Rafferty says.

“No.” She holds out the bag to him as though he has something communicable, not meeting his eyes.

“What do you mean, no?”

“No. Just no.” Her arm remains stretched out, her hand clutching the bag, forgotten.

“Can you be a little more specific?”

“This boy. No good. Him…him…” She extends her right hand, index finger pointing like the barrel of a pistol, and lets her thumb drop. “Bang, bang,” she says. Then she says, “Him kill.”

T
he guard’s head breaks the surface, spouting pints of muddy water. His jaws have been clamped open with a stainless-steel device designed for root canals. When it was forced into the guard’s mouth, it dislocated his jaw, which sags to the side like something in a funhouse mirror.

The largest of the three shirtless men ringing the hole in the lawn puts a hand the size of a badminton racket on top of the guard’s head and pushes him back under.

One of the other men laughs.

“I’m glad you find this amusing,” says the lady of the house, and the laughter stops as suddenly as though someone had shut a door on it.

The guard surfaces again, and the big man slams him on top of the head with the broad side of a brick. Red brick dust settles on the surface of the water. His arms flailing, the guard tries to get a grip on the grass fringing the hole, but the man who laughed puts the edge of his boot heel on the closest hand and grinds down. Whatever it is
the guard is trying to say, the dental appliance turns it into one long, agonized vowel.

The biggest man picks up the garden hose that they have used to fill the hole and wields it like a whip, the metal at its tip opening cuts in the guard’s scalp and face. Water spouts out of the hose in lazy arcs, sparkling in the late-afternoon sun. The guard goes underwater, this time on his own, trying to dodge the hose, and the man lashes at the surface of the water, splashing the thick liquid everywhere.

The lady of the house moves her chair back so she will not get mud on her shoes. She says, “Give him another drink.”

When the guard surfaces again, one of the men grabs his ears, tilting his face up, and the big man thrusts the end of the hose into the guard’s mouth and six or eight inches straight down his throat. Then he pinches the guard’s nostrils closed. The guard begins to spasm, thrashing, striking out with his arms, spouting water like a fountain. After ten or fifteen seconds, the big man pulls the hose out, and a spurt of water gives way to a ragged howl loud enough and high enough to lift the birds from the trees and send them skimming over the placid, coffee-colored surface of the river.

“Two more times,” says the lady of the house, settling herself in her chair to watch the hose snake once again into the wide mouth. “Or maybe three.”

The scream is cut off as abruptly as it started. “Then we’ll start to ask him questions,” she says.

S
ilhouetted against the setting sun, Miaow squats on the little balcony overlooking the Chinese cemetery eight floors below, staring a hole in the fire as she feeds the blue flames their blue fuel. The sleeve of Superman’s filthy sweatshirt hangs over the side of Rafferty’s rusty hibachi. A fine edge of flame licks its way down. With a long-handled barbecue fork, Miaow spears the sleeve, lifts it, and drops it into the center of the flames, raising a small puff of smoke and ash. The sliding glass door between the balcony and the living room is open, and Bangkok’s March heat and the throat-scratching smell of burning cloth fill the room.

“Miaow,” Rafferty says. She turns her face fractionally farther away from him. “Miaow, we have to talk.”

“After,” Miaow says in English. She does not say it loudly, but her tone is final.

The plastic bags hang heavy in his hands. “Fine. But not
too
much after, okay? Where’s Rose?”

“Using all your soap,” Rose says in Thai, coming into the living
room. “This boy has so much dirt on him I’m not sure there’s anyone underneath.” Her sleeves are rolled up, and soapsuds gleam on her dark arms. An archipelago of splash marks decorates the front of her shirt.

“He doesn’t have a
house
,” Miaow says fiercely to the fire. “How clean would
you
be if you had to wash yourself on the street and they chased you away all the time?”

“We get the point,” Rafferty says. “Nobody meant that he—”

“
I
was dirty,” Miaow snaps. She still has not looked at them. In the rigidity of her back, Rafferty sees the fury of the powerless. She knows that the decision, whatever it is, will come from the adults.

“And look how nicely you cleaned up,” he says as Rose rolls her eyes. “Here’s some special shampoo,” Rafferty says to Rose, pulling the bag open to show her a bottle of Kwell. “There’s some…ah, salve in there, too.”

“For
bugs,
” Miaow says disdainfully in Thai, without a glance. “As though bugs matter.”

“Bugs do matter,” Rose says sharply.

The words bring Miaow’s head around sharply. Rafferty is startled at the fury in her face. “What’s more important?” she demands. “Not having bugs or not letting people…
play
with you?”

“We’re not fighting with you, Miaow,” Rose says.

Miaow shrugs and folds herself into an even smaller knot, hunkering down over her knees. Sharp shoulder blades protrude on either side of her spine, curled back like stunted wings. The movements of her hand as she stirs the flames are short and jerky. Misery emanates from her like a fog. The sky darkens behind her, its lower edge torn jagged against the silhouettes of buildings as the night skyline of Bangkok blinks into being, rectangle by rectangle, one office block of lights at a time.

“I bought him some new clothes,” Rafferty says helplessly. Female unhappiness is as mysterious to him as plant disease. He knows it when he sees it, but he has no idea what to do about it.

Miaow sniffles, and Rafferty takes a step toward her, but Rose grabs his arm.

“You’re being stupid,” Rose whispers in Thai. “She’s manipulating you.” She yanks at his arm, not gently. “In the kitchen.”

He follows her, still lugging the plastic bags with their bottles of medicated shampoo and whatever else the lady at Siam Drugs foisted off on him. He drops them onto the counter, and Rose puts an exploratory hand on the bags and the other on her hip. “You’re both acting like children.”

“One of us
is
a child, Rose.”

“Not the way you mean. Miaow is short and she has a high voice, but she’s not anything you mean when you say ‘child.’ She can take care of herself better than you can.” Rose swipes her forehead with the back of a long brown forearm and leaves a lacy pattern of soapsuds in her hair. “You can’t let her act like a baby all of a sudden.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Rose’s eyes widen at the frustration in his voice. “Explain the laws of adoption to her? Maybe bring in a lawyer? Run a spreadsheet to show her how much the kid will cost? A pie chart to illustrate what I have in the bank? How exactly do you think I should deal with this, Rose?”

Rose puts her fingertips against the front of his throat and begins a gentle downward smoothing motion, the Southeast Asian remedy for unseemly emotional displays. Thais take equanimity very seriously, and no one loses face faster than someone who gets angry. “You deal with it the way you should deal with everything,” she says, soothing him. “With a cool heart. You look for what’s best for everyone. You create a situation where you can earn merit.”

“So we don’t just clean the kid up, dress him in new clothes, slip him a twenty, wish him luck, and put him back on the street.”

Rose looks past Rafferty at the balcony, where Miaow has let her head fall all the way forward onto her chest. “You can’t,” Rose says. “I think you’ll lose Miaow if you do.”

The words straighten Rafferty’s spine. “You don’t know what I’ve heard about this kid. Tik says he killed someone.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me,” Rose says.

Rafferty abandons the rest of his speech and stares at her.

“I can see it. When I was dancing, there were men who came into
the bar, and I knew immediately I shouldn’t go with them. They hated women, and the hatred steamed off them like heat from a road. It rippled. I knew I shouldn’t let them buy me drinks, shouldn’t let them talk to me, shouldn’t give them any reason to think they were going to get me out of the bar. I tried to tell the other girls, but some of them went anyway. They came back with cigarette burns on their arms, a missing tooth, a broken nose, razor cuts on the webbing between the fingers. And those men only
shimmered
. This boy’s aura is a very dark red. It boils the air around him. He’s like a cat that’s gone wild again and can’t decide whether it wants to kill or be fed.” She holds out her arm to display a red crescent of bruising, not bad enough to break the skin but bad enough to triple Rafferty’s pulse. “He bit me,” she says.

Rafferty slaps a palm against one thigh. “That’s that. He’s gone.”

A hand on his arm. “Miaow will go with him.”

“She won’t.” He is whispering, and he can see Miaow straining to hear him. “She’s not going to run away with a killer.”

“Even if he is a killer,” Rose says, “we don’t know who he killed.”

“And?” Rafferty says. “If we knew, that would make everything okay?”

“There are people who should die.” Rose might be discussing the price of milk. “Americans have a hard time with that, because they think everyone who is bad got broken somehow and someone else is at fault. Whoever broke them. But in the real world, people know life would be better if some people were removed from it.”

“Jesus,” Rafferty says. Her face is calm and clear. “I feel like I’m back in the States, listening to talk radio.”

“I don’t know what that means. But I know you’ll lose Miaow if you don’t keep your heart cool. Learn what you can. The boy has been hurt terribly. Just listen and go gently, and look for a chance to do something good.” She leans forward, kisses his cheek, and taps the nearest plastic bag. “And give me the shampoo.”

He hands it to her and watches her straight back as she leaves the room. The kitchen is immaculately ordered, everything part of a set,
everything in the right place. If anything broke, he thinks, it would create disorder and incompletion as obvious as a missing tooth. But, of course, there’s nothing in the kitchen that couldn’t be replaced.

“UNLESS MY EYES
deceive me, we’re burning clothes.” Framed in the doorway, despite a yellow polo shirt and a pair of checkered slacks loud enough to draw stares even on a golf course, Rafferty’s friend Arthit still looks like a cop. “Are we trying to make someone disappear?”

“Actually, we’re attempting a rebirth,” Rafferty says.

“If you figure it out, let us know,” Arthit says. “There are a few hundred thousand people who’d give their all for it.” He looks hollowed out, almost to the point of transparency. Total exhaustion identifies honest cops in the days following the great waves, in stark contrast to the sleek cheeriness of their corrupt colleagues. The tsunami has made many of them extremely rich. “How are you, Miaow?” Arthit calls over Rafferty’s shoulder. “If you sit all bent over like that too long, you’ll fold your lungs.” Miaow does not answer, but she straightens a tiny amount and stirs the fire. Arthit brings his eyes to Poke’s and says, “I’d love to come in, thanks. And did you say something about a beer?”

“Sorry, Arthit.” Rafferty steps aside and lets Arthit in. The trousers make him look like a giant Scotch tape dispenser. “Take whatever’s in the fridge.”

“We all aspire to the manners of the West,” Arthit says, stepping past him. “‘Take whatever’s in the fridge.’ In those few words, you can hear generations of breeding. Do you want one?”

“More than I should. So, no.”

Arthit disappears into the kitchen, trailing a blur of plaid, and Miaow follows him with her eyes, seeing a possible ally.

“You’re obviously off duty,” Rafferty calls. “At least from the waist down.”

“Noi says I’m dreary.” Rafferty hears the pop and hiss of a can being opened. “Do you think I’m dreary?” Noi is Arthit’s wife,
grappling with the early stages of multiple sclerosis. Rafferty suddenly sees the pants differently: Arthit would report for work wearing an ostrich-feather peignoir if he thought it would make Noi happy.

“No drearier than any of my other friends.”

Arthit emerges from the kitchen, a can of Singha beer in hand. “Not the ringing endorsement I had hoped for. I personally think I’m intriguing.” He is speaking British-accented English, a legacy of long, cold, miserable years spent as an exotic brown boy in one of the United Kingdom’s better schools. “There’s more to me than meets the eye. The younger Claude Rains comes to mind.”

“I always thought Claude Rains looked like someone who secretly kept small animals in a dark room.”

“Aren’t you cheery. I see Miaow, pooled in misery out there, but where’s Rose?”

“Doing some washing.” Poke and Arthit are friends, but he does not want to talk about the boy until he’s figured out how to present the topic.

“She’s washing my friend,” Miaow volunteers from the balcony. “He’s dirty.”

Arthit’s eyebrows go up, and Poke says, “Later, okay? It’s a little complicated.”

“Not complicated,” Miaow says stubbornly. “He’s my
friend
. Poke let me bring him home.”

“Poke’s heart is bigger than his head,” Arthit says. “But if the kid is a friend of yours, he has to be okay.”

This is met with silence, even from Miaow.

Arthit says, “This is what’s known in the interrogation room as a pregnant pause.”

“Like I said,
later
,” Rafferty says. “And maybe you do resemble Claude Rains.”

“So.” Arthit upends the beer and lowers it again. “Dreary as the movie might be, let’s cast your life story. If Claude Rains plays me, who do we give to Sydney Greenstreet?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Rafferty says as Hofstedler, in his flowered fumigation shirt, lumbers into his mind’s eye. “That was
your
handwriting. Leon calling her a woman of mystery—was that your idea, too?”

“Not at all. He probably just forgot her name, what with her being in her thirties and all. On the other hand, Leon could spot a conspiracy in a water-gun fight.”

“You sent her to the bar. Whoever she is.”

“She’s a perfectly nice Australian woman named Clarissa Ulrich whose uncle has gone missing. And I’m sorry about the indirect approach. I’ve been busy, and I ran into Leon, so I offered him something to do besides throwing money at bar girls. I didn’t want to give Clarissa your address.”

“Was he down there?”

“The uncle? That’s my first guess,” Arthit says. The can goes up again, and he swallows longer than Rafferty could hold his breath.

Rafferty waits until the can has been lowered. “And this has what to do with me?”

“Well, on one level you wrote that piece about finding foreign men in Thailand who didn’t want to be found. I gave a copy to Clarissa, and she thought it was very interesting.”

“But you know it was silly. I asked you where they were, and you told me.”

“Our little secret,” Arthit says. “On another level—a much more important level—it’s an opportunity to do me a favor.” He drinks again and smooths his hair with his free hand. “At a time when it might be a good idea for you to be owed a few. We both know how much you hate to ask for favors, so I thought this would make it easier.”

“The adoption.” The process of a Westerner adopting a Thai child—as Poke hopes to do with Miaow—is an endless minefield.

Arthit pats his belly. “Testimonials from four or five of Bangkok’s finest, so to speak, would smooth things considerably.”

“What’s this Australian got to do with you?”

“Nothing personal,” Arthit says. “She was getting passed around among some of my hungrier colleagues. She arrived a week ago with about six thousand in traveler’s checks, and she’s down to three thousand now. With nothing to show for it. So I thought, let’s snatch
her from the jaws of the wolves and turn her over to someone who’s going to need a few favors. Do a little something for both of you.”

“I wish I could say I appreciate it.”

“Just talk to her.” Arthit lowers his voice. “I’ll get you into his apartment, which is something my brother officers couldn’t be bothered to do, and you’ll probably find something that shows he flitted down to Phuket or Phang Nga. You’re a reporter, Poke. You know more about how Thailand works than any other
farang
I know. A couple days down there, you’ll have it wrapped up.”

“He looks much better now,” Rose says, coming into the room. “It’s amazing what a little soap will do. Hello, Arthit. How’s Noi?”

“She’s fine, thanks,” Arthit says automatically. It is the lie he always tells.

Rose turns to the balcony. “Really, Miaow, he’s almost handsome.”

“I know,” Miaow says. She throws a look at Rose and then turns away again.

“I’m in your way here,” Arthit says. He reaches into the pocket of the plaid pants and pulls out one of his business cards. On the other side is the name “Clarissa Ulrich” in that same disciplined handwriting, followed by a phone number. “Promise me you’ll call tomorrow?”