Breathing Water (31 page)

B
oo waves the motorcycle taxis past the gate that Dr. Ravi’s car pulled through. The gate is high and rusted, twisted as though someone drove straight through it, and it sags disconsolately to the right, like it’s hoping for something to lean on. There are no lights visible on the other side, just tall, spiky weeds and the looming hulk of a building.

Not until the bikes are almost a quarter of a mile down the road, with the gate behind them, does Boo wave the convoy to a stop. The road is just heavily oiled dirt, spotted with patches of asphalt to fill in holes. On either side, vertical screens of foliage climb chain-link fences to mask the squat industrial buildings they surround. Razor wire spirals its silver teeth along the tops of some of the fences. Except for a weak wash of moonlight diffused through ragged, gauzy clouds and a single spotlight shining uselessly on an empty parking lot across the street, the area is dark. Two feral-looking older boys climb off the bike behind Boo’s, but when the person on the third bike begins to dismount, Boo waves her to stay put.

“You’re going back to the shack,” he says.

“No, I’m not,” Da says. “I’m going where you go.” She has made a
sling of Rose’s cashmere shawl, and Peep peers over the edge of it, curious now that the movement of the motorbike has stopped.

“This isn’t the same as watching a house,” Boo says. “We don’t even know what’s in there.”

“You should have said that before we all got on the bikes,” Da says. “And there are four of us, and Khun Poke is bringing all his police, right?”

“You’re not coming.”

“You don’t understand, do you?” She looks at him as though he’s slow and she’s grown impatient with waiting for the idea to drop. “I’m going where you’re going.” She steps toward him, and he backs up. “What’s your problem? I’m a
girl
?”

Boo licks his lips, looks away, and then his eyes come back to her and he says, “The baby.” The boys are watching, and to Boo’s irritation they look amused.

“Peep?” Da says, her eyes wide and innocent. She puts a hand, open-fingered, against her heart. “Peep, in
danger?
Peep’s been in danger ever since he got stolen. He’s used to it. If he wasn’t in danger, he’d probably start to cry. His karma has kept him safe until now, and either it’ll keep him safe tonight or it won’t. Just like yours. He’ll be fine or not. Just like you.”

One of the boys laughs, and Boo rounds on him, fists clenched.

“See?” Da says. “Even your friends aren’t afraid of you. I’m not letting you go in there without me.”

The night’s silence breaks open as something mechanical sputters, coughs, and gradually works its way up to an irregular chug. A motor of some kind. The half-moon emerges from behind a scrap of cloud to reveal an area that looks post-human. The world is a narrow oiled road, fences, weeds, and empty black buildings like giant boxes dropped to earth at random.

“Generator,” says one of the boys. “Must be back there.”

Boo has wheeled around to face the sound. While his back is turned, Da hops off the bike and taps the driver on the shoulder. He glances at her, takes the money in her hand, and pops the clutch. By the time Boo’s head snaps around, the bike is ten meters away, accelerating into the night.

Boo glares at Da. Da reaches into the shawl, brings up Peep’s hand,
and waves it from side to side at Boo. The other boys start to laugh, then cover their mouths to muffle the sound. Da is grinning, too, but Boo’s lips are a tight line. He stands perfectly still, waiting for silence.

“We’re doing this my way, and anybody who thinks I don’t mean that can find a new bunch of friends and a new way to buy food tomorrow.” His voice is a sharp-edged whisper. “Everybody understand that?” He looks at Da. “
Everybody
?”

Nods all around. The boys study their feet. Da busies herself with Peep, but she makes a syllable of assent.

“I’m going through the gate first. You all”—he focuses on Da again—“
all
of you, you wait until I wave you in. Once we’re all in, you do what I say unless I’m dead, and then it’s up to you. Anything there you don’t understand?”

“Yes,” Da says, for all of them. “You’re not supposed to go in. Rafferty said we were just supposed to watch.”

“And that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to watch. And if I see anything I don’t like, I’ll come back out and we’ll wait.”

“You will not,” Da says. “You’ll show off, do something brave. And stupid.”

“You know,” Boo says, “I was doing just fine until you came along.” He turns and faces the road, a dark ribbon in the moonlight. “We’ve got some brush on this side of the road. Stay close to it, and duck in if you hear a car.” Without waiting for a response, he starts toward the factory.

“IT’S THE CELL
network guy,” Ren says, holding out the cordless phone to Ton.

“Give me the phone number for Rafferty’s woman,” Ton says. Into the phone he says, “Hi, Poy. Thanks for calling. I’m sorry to interrupt your evening, but this’ll just take a minute. Listen, I’ve had a theft from one of my businesses…. No, nothing serious, but you can’t let these things go. Got to make an example, or other people start to get ambitious, you know what I mean?” He laughs, extending a hand for the slip of paper on which Ren has written Rose’s phone number. He opens and closes the hand quickly several times to hurry Ren. “She’s got her cell phone on,” he says into the telephone, “and I need a location.” He
takes the slip of paper from Ren, glances at it, listens for a moment, and says, “Wait.” To Ren he says, “How long since you checked to see whether she’s still got the phone?”

“Kai called a few hours back.”

“Call again, now.”

“But we already—”

“Do it. I’m not going through all this and then sending out a bunch of people to find a phone that’s in a trash can somewhere.”

“Fine.” With a glance at the paper from which he copied the number, Ren dials. He closes his eyes as he waits and then opens them, listens, and disconnects. “The little girl answered,” he says.

“Fine. They’ll be together.” Into the phone Ton says, “Here’s the number. How close can you get?” He goes to the big desk, sits down, and powers up a computer. “No,” he says. “I doubt she’s got a GPS phone. Probably just some junk she bought used. Does it matter?” He clicks a mouse to bring up Google Earth and positions the cursor over Bangkok. “Really,” he says. “Within fifty meters? That’s amazing. Listen, give it to me in coordinates if you can. I want to try to locate it on the computer.”

Kai comes into the room and looks first at Ton and then at Ren.

“It’s the guy at the phone company,” Ren says quietly. “Tracking down the woman and the girl.”

“I’m ready,” Ton says, with a pencil in his free hand. “Just read it to me.” He writes some numbers on the pad and says, “As close as fifty meters, huh? Well, I owe you. And I’m sorry about the bother. Go back to your party.” He drops the phone on the desk and starts to punch numbers into the computer. “Where are you?” he asks out loud. “Let’s just zoom in a little bit—” The sentence ends in a surprised puff of air. He sits perfectly still, staring at the screen. Both Kai and Ren are looking at him.

Finally Ton tears his eyes from the computer. “Get me four guys right now,” he says. “Guys who don’t much care what they have to do and don’t have any idea who you work for. You won’t believe where you’re going to take them.”

“WHOEVER IT WAS,”
Da says, looking at the phone, “they hung up.”

“Where did you get that?” Boo says, taking the phone out of her hand.

“It was on the floor at the shack.”

“And you picked it up.”

She reaches for it, but he puts it behind his back. “Nobody wanted it,” she protests. “Everybody else had one.”

“And you left it on.”

“Well,” she says, “what good is it if it’s off? Oh, come on, I never had one before.”

“And you haven’t got one now,” Boo says. He powers the phone off, brings his arm back, and throws it over the nearest fence.

“Hey,” Da says.

He steps toward her, showing her a face that’s all muscle. “Suppose it had rung while we were inside? Suppose we’re watching something we’re not supposed to see, and your damn phone rings. Has anybody else got one that’s on?”

One of the boys holds one up. “It’s on silent.”

“Turn it off.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Anything else stupid?” Boo asks. “Any alarm clocks? Talking dolls? Anybody got squeakies in their tennis shoes?”

Nobody answers him.

“When we get to the gate, you two”—he points at Da and one of the boys—“you wait across the street. Get behind some bushes. You,” he says to the other boy, the smaller of the two. “You come just inside the gate and to one side of it. Keep your eyes on me as long as you can. Relay any signal I give you. If I want you, I’ll just wave you in. Two fingers means call some more kids. But if there’s trouble”—he holds up his right hand, fingers splayed—“five fingers means run for your lives, got it? In different directions. When you know you’re clear, get back to where we got off the bikes and find a place to hide there. We’ll meet up there and figure out what’s next.”

Nobody says anything. Boo holds up his hand again, two fingers extended. “Means what?”

“Phone kids,” says the smaller boy.

“And?” He displays all five fingers.

“Run,” Da says.

Boo looks directly into her eyes. “And you’d better.”

AFTER REN AND
Kai leave to pick up their muscle, Ton remains at his desk. It seems like a long time since he’s been alone in this room. He interlaces his fingers and rests his chin on them, and then he closes his eyes to eliminate distraction while he works his way through a conversation he does not want to have.

The position he’s in now is the one he dreamed of when he was a young man, the outcome he’d hoped for when he married into a ranking family by taking the scandal daughter, the one no one could manage, the woman who has become the wife he never sees. It’s taken him years of patient labor to build the trust of those above him, but he’s in his element now: behind the scenes, working in partnership with the kingdom’s most powerful men to maintain the order of things. To keep the kingdom secure, to keep the proper class—the educated class, the traditional leaders—in charge. To keep the nation moving forward. Thailand is already the wealthiest state in Southeast Asia, and Ton has become an important part of the group that has worked in an unbroken line, generation after generation, to accomplish that.

And, of course, he’s gotten very rich doing it.

But there are things about it he hates. There are times in the past week when he’s felt like a thug. Having to associate with Ren and Kai—having them in his
house
—has been almost physically painful at times. But there was no alternative. There was no possibility of allowing the usual four or five levels of management to know about the arrangement with Pan. It would have been in the papers within weeks of their agreement. He’ll have to do something about Ren and Kai, but he can worry about that later.

Now
is the problem. Things are going outside the lines and have been ever since the reporter had to be killed, and he’s moments from a conversation that actually frightens him. He can’t remember the last time he was frightened.

He is working on his third possible opening, trying to find a way to position the discussion without its leading to something disastrous being said, when he becomes aware of a regular fluctuation of light, visible even through his closed eyelids. With a sigh of resignation, he opens his eyes and looks at the halogen lamp on his desk, which is blinking on and off. He pushes his chair back a foot or two and reaches down to the lowest drawer, which he pulls open. The files stacked inside are bulky and hard to handle, and he needs both hands to remove
them and put them on the desk. The desk lamp continues to flicker as he leans back down to the drawer. On the bottom edge, his fingers find the small metal tab and pull it forward. A little snicking sound signals the rise, no more than half an inch, of the drawer’s false bottom. Ton lifts the bottom panel to a vertical position and pulls out the flat telephone that’s stored beneath it.

Only one person has this number.

Ton breathes twice, swallows, picks up the receiver, and says, “Yes, sir.”

“My boy,” says the man on the other end. “How are you?”

“I’m somewhat preoccupied. I’m sorry to have bothered you, but there’s a problem.”

“No bother, no bother. Before we get to the problems, I want to apologize.”

This line had not arisen in any of his visualizations of the conversation. “For what, General?”

“I didn’t like your idea, the
farang
snooping around in Pan’s past. Too fancy, I thought. Well, I was wrong. It was obvious almost immediately that Pan wouldn’t get to election day without all that bothersome material coming to light. Got me thinking in other directions.”

“It did?”

“Yes, and I have exactly what we need. But first, tell me about this bullshit announcement he’s threatening to make.”

“It’s Porthip. With Porthip dying—”

“Your
farang
went to the hospital tonight,” the general says, as though Ton weren’t speaking. “With a cop and another man. The other man could have been a cop, too.”

The back of Ton’s shirt is suddenly damp. “He did?”

“He did. And Porthip told him.”

“He
told
him? You mean, about Snakeskin?”

“About Snakeskin, about you. You personally. You want to hear the tape?”

“No. That…um, that won’t be necessary.”

“You didn’t know your
farang
was there, did you?”

This is the topic he knows he can’t control. All he can do is step up to it. “No. He shook his tail. I can’t use my best people, because they know who I am, and of course I’m connected to you. So I have to use contract guys, and they’re not—”

“I understand,” the general says.

Ton tugs his shirt away from his skin and manages not to sigh in relief. “Thank you. But if Porthip’s talking—”