The Fear Artist (35 page)

“Yeah,” Rafferty says, “it’s swell to doubt everything. It’s a great way to live, holding everything up to the light all the time, checking every label, looking for the spider in your pocket.”

Vladimir makes a clucking noise. “You are in bad mood.”

“Gee, you think?” He sits up, his exhaustion gone. “Hold it, I know where she’s going.”

“Where?”

“They’re going to turn up here. You keep going, two more turns, then you turn, same direction as them. Tell Janos to wait at the corner. He can follow them again when they come back down.”

“Maybe you wrong,” Vladimir says, but at that moment the sedan’s turn indicator begins to blink. He says, “Huh.”

“Nyaaa-nyaaa,” Rafferty says. “Skip this turn and the next, then make the one after. You’ll go uphill and then take a right, and we’ll be looking down at them.”

Vladimir barks orders at Janos, and then he and Rafferty ride in silence until the second turn comes up, and Rafferty says, “One more,” and Vladimir snaps, “Yah, yah, yah.” He takes the turn and points the car up a gentle hill.

“At top?” he says.

“Yes. Kill your lights just before you turn right and then pull to the left curb.”

“Street is one-way?”

“It is.”

“This part Bangkok, I don’t know.”

“You haven’t missed much. Turn coming up.”

When Vladimir switches the lights off, Rafferty realizes that it’s gotten darker than he thought. “Go down half a block before you pull over,” he says.

“Cannot get close with no lights.” Vladimir is peering through the windshield. “They see car with no lights, they know we looking.”

“It’s dark,” Rafferty says. “It’s raining. Tell you what.” He picks up the phone and says, “Janos. Go to the next turn and then come up here and go right. I’m pretty sure you’ll drive past them, and when you do, hit your brakes for a second, slow down, and then drive away.”

“Wery good,” Vladimir says grudgingly.

“I’m learning,” Rafferty says. “Just hanging around with you, I’m learning.”

Vladimir says, “Peh,” but he looks pleased.

They make the turn, and a glance along the street tells Rafferty he was right; between the rain and the darkness, they can’t see more than a block. Vladimir pulls to the curb and puts the car in its lowest gear to slow it. Half a block down, the rain eases, and Rafferty says, “Stop,” and Vladimir uses the hand brake so the brake lights won’t come on.

The white sedan is idling at the curb on the opposite side of the street, in front of the paint store. The blond woman gets out and opens an umbrella, then takes a few slow steps until she’s dead center in the pale stain that Rafferty’s spill of paint left on the sidewalk. She stands still for a count of eight or ten and then closes her umbrella and hangs it over her left wrist. She bows her head in the rain and brings her hands up, palm to palm, to the center of her chest. She remains motionless, head down as her suit gets wet and heavy, and her hair drips with rain, until Janos’s car makes the turn and rolls past. He taps the brakes, but even the sudden gleam of red light doesn’t crack her concentration. Rafferty is asking himself whether he’s wrong as Janos’s car goes on down the hill, but then, when Vladimir says, “Look at car,”
Rafferty does, and he sees the driver put his head out the window, watching Janos’s taxi.

Vladimir says, “Driwer. Driwer is professional.”

“B
ECAUSE YOU CAN’T,”
Rafferty says. “Because I don’t want Anna to see you.”

He and Ming Li are in her room in their new hotel. It’s functional but not fancy, not even a little bit cleaner than it needs to be, and the carpet and bedclothes smell of old cigarettes. On the center of the bed, making little dents in the mattress, are two small automatic pistols, scratched and nicked, and a couple boxes of ammunition.

“I understand that,” Ming Li says, although she’s clearly not happy about it. She’s claimed the room’s armchair, which is too big for her; her feet barely graze the carpet. It makes her look like a child. “But I want to be close, just in case. I know you’re not going to call to say you’re coming, but I mean, what if she goes in the other room and uses a phone, ‘Come get him’?”

“An even better reason for you not to be there. If anything happened to you, Frank would kill me.” He’s leaning against a wall, letting his clothes drip, and he puts one foot up against it. One more scuff won’t ruin the decor.

Ming Li says, “You think he would?” She gives it a moment’s thought, lips pursed. “Anyway, you’d already be dead.”

“Well, good, then at least I won’t have to worry about Frank.”

“He called me,” Ming Li says casually. “While I was buying the guns.”

Rafferty says, “What did he want to know?”

She runs her fingers over the napped fabric on the arm of the chair, leaving five parallel lines, like sheet music. “Listen to you. Not, ‘What did he say?’ Not, ‘How was he?’ No, it’s ‘What did he want to know?’ He wanted to know how you were. How I was. He wanted to know if we needed help, if there was anyone here he should call.”

“And you said.”

“I said everything was fine, that there were no problems, and that I’d be coming home in a few days.”

Something in her tone catches Rafferty’s ear. “And?”

“And he … um, he asked me again how you’d feel about him moving back here.”

“To Bangkok.”

There’s a spark in her dark eyes. “If that’s what ‘here’ means.”

“I thought you guys had it cushy back in the States. To hear Elson tell it, you’re living like royalty. What would he do for money if he came—if you all came—here?”

“Is that really the issue?” Ming Li says. “What he’ll do for money? He’s your father, not your child. He’s not going to sponge off you.”

“I suppose—”

“But that’s not the point, is it? It’s that you’re doing the big tough-guy cowboy act: This town’s not big enough for both of you.”

“I’m not sure it is.”

“
I’d
be here,” Ming Li says.

“And that would be great,” he says.

A silence claims the room. She’s curled up in her chair, looking at him. Her head is pulled back on her neck as though she half expects him to take a swing at her.

“You know,” he says, “if it was okay with Frank, and if it wouldn’t bring him across the ocean, I could probably work out a way for you to stay here.”

Her eyes widen, and she doesn’t make a sound, but when she blinks, a tear slips down her cheek. Then she’s up, and her arms are around him. “You don’t know,” she says, “you
can’t
know, how much that means to me.”

“It’s just an—”

“I don’t belong anywhere—not America, not even China, not anymore. I’m a nuisance to my mother, and Frank … well, Frank doesn’t need me. He’d go anywhere in the world that appealed to him and never even ask if I wanted to go. He’d forget to pack me.”

Poke says, “Vladimir is crazy about you.”

She laughs and backs off, wiping her nose. “I know. But he’s not exactly what I have in mind.”

“And I’m crazy about you, too.”

“Thank you,” she says. She squares her shoulders and rubs her face with her forearm. “I won’t hold you to it, but thank you. All right, I won’t go with you to Arthit’s. I’ll be around the corner in the car, with the motor running, just in case.”

“Can you drive?”

“Better than you, in a pinch. Nobody drives like a teenager.”

He nods. A moment ticks by. He says, “And you
can
hold me to it.”

“Well,” she says, and takes a shaky breath. Then she abandons the sentence and goes to the bed. “You wanted small,” she says, all business. “Mrs. Ma had a lot of Chinese guns, but Frank always called them ‘three-finger specials’ because they blow up all the time, so these are both Colts. They’re kind of beat up, and this one fires hot, Mrs. Ma said, but they work.” She picks up the smaller and racks it, the slide smooth and precise-sounding. “Forty-five. Kicks like a horse, according to Mrs. Ma, so I figure this one is yours.” She taps the barrel on a box. “Ammo here. And the other one is mine.” She drops the gun back on the bed and licks her lips, looking down at them. “She said hello, by the way. Mrs. Ma did.”

“I couldn’t have gotten through this without you,” he says.

“I know that. But don’t make me cry anymore. It messes up my self-image.”

“Fine.” He pushes off from the wall. “I’m going to put on a dry shirt, and then we’ll go.”

“I’ll drive.”

“No,” he says. “Let’s save that weapon until we need it. Which we probably will.”

“I
WENT AROUND
the block half a dozen times,” Rafferty says. There are candles burning on the living-room table, and Arthit clearly hadn’t been expecting anyone. He feels very much like the uninvited guest, so he’s making small talk to soften his entrance. “Nobody seemed to be watching the house.”

“It’s kind of surprising,” Arthit says. He blows out the candles and glances at Anna, who immediately drops her eyes in a way that probably looks demure to Arthit but to Rafferty looks like a plain old guilty conscience. “I keep checking,” Arthit says, turning on the lights. “It’s been that way for days, which is odd. There’s nothing my superiors would rather do than hang me out the window in the rain.”

Anna holds up her pad, aiming it at Poke. It says,
You’ve been careful?
When she glances up at Poke, she catches him staring and gives him a tentative smile. He smiles back, his face as stiff as cardboard.

“Careful as I can be,” he says.

Arthit hasn’t sat yet. He says, “You want a drink?”

“Beer would be nice.”

“Fine.” He turns toward the dining room, but Anna is up and on her way, motioning Arthit back to the couch.

“I feel guilty,” Arthit says as he sits down.

“About what?”

“All this.” He raises his chin in the direction Anna took. “I’m here, feeling like I’m living in a greeting card, while you’re out there with half the world looking for you.”

“I’m doing okay,” Rafferty says. “And you have a life to live.”

“I hope so. I mean, I know so. And I know that this will be over soon, and we’ll all be back to normal. But I wish Rose had been around to get used to … this …” he says, with a vague circular gesture that takes in the two of them and Anna, in the other room. “I wish she could have gone through it in stages, like I did, instead of being presented with it in full bloom, so to speak, when she gets back.” His tone is light, but his eyes hold Poke’s. “She loved Noi so much.” He stops and swallows. “Will she be okay with it?”

“I can’t say,” Poke tells him. “We’ll have to let time sort it out.” He feels the coldness of the answer. “Everything is … good with the two of you?”

Arthit says, “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it.” He turns his head a few inches toward the dining room and continues. “She’s not Noi, I know that, but no one is. No one ever could be. But she’s not like anyone I’ve ever known, and—” He looks down at his knees and crosses his blunt, dark hands in his lap. The lamp makes his gold wedding band gleam. He shrugs. “And I think she loves me.”

There’s no way around it. “I’m sure she does.” His throat feels so tight he’s surprised Arthit can’t hear it.

“I didn’t mean to talk about this,” Arthit says, “You’ve got all these problems, and I’m rattling along about being in love. Please forgive me. You’ve got something important to talk about.”

“It’s all important,” Rafferty says, automatically. While Anna’s still out of the room, he asks, “Did Kosit follow Eddie Bland from the airport?”

“Straight to a big house that turns out to be Murphy’s. Still there. And he’s booked back to Kuala Lumpur at midnight, so he’ll probably stay put till then.”

“I guess Kosit can go home, then,” Rafferty says, getting up as Anna comes into the room, a middle-height, sturdily built woman who moves like a very light one. The businesslike chop of her hair bares her face, her smooth brow, her wide-set, guileless eyes. She hands him the beer in a bottle and smiles, then closes her eyes and screws up her face with effort.

Arthit watches with an expression halfway between apprehension and fierce pride.

Anna, her eyes still closed, says, slowly and tonelessly, “No … glass.” Her eyes fly wide open and go to Arthit’s, and he’s beaming from ear to ear. She drops her head to hide her own smile and turns deep red, and Rafferty wishes lightning would strike him where he stands.

Anna gives him a shy, quick glance and hands Arthit a glass with a good four fingers’ worth of whiskey in it. Then she mimes wiping sweat off her forehead and collapses beside him on the couch, letting her head drop onto his shoulder.

“We’ve been working on that,” Arthit says. He rests his free hand on her thigh. “She thinks she sounds ugly when she talks. But she doesn’t.” He catches himself and shakes his head. “Please. Let’s talk about your problems.”

“Well, first,” Rafferty says, sitting, “I’m very happy for both of you.”

Anna says, out loud, “Thank you.” She drags out the
a
on “thank” a bit experimentally and gives both words the same pitch and the same stress, but her voice is low and pleasant, coming from someplace in the center of her chest. Arthit’s face, as he watches her, is as transparent as water.

“So,” Rafferty says, mostly to break the moment, because it’s too painful to look at, “I want to bounce something off you.”

“Anything,” Arthit says. “And if I can help, tell me.”

“No, I don’t want to involve you. But you can give me an opinion.” He tries not to glace at Anna and fails. She smiles encouragingly.

“Helen Eckersley,” he says. “The woman in Cheyenne.” For a wild, panicked moment, remembers that when he talked to Anna last, he said, “Helena,” but she hasn’t noticed the change; perhaps it’s the difficulty in lip-reading either word. And Arthit doesn’t know that Eckersley is dead, that she was Vietnamese, a survivor of the massacre in the Delta, but he knows he hasn’t. They’ve barely spoken, beyond immediate needs, for days. It’s Ming Li he’s been talking with. “I called her in the States, starting a few days back. Left three or four messages on her machine. I never talked to her. But she called me a couple of days ago. She’s here. She wants to meet me.”