The Fourth Watcher (22 page)

The man glances around the room as though he hopes there is help there somewhere, and says, “My teeth?”

“Now,” Chu says. “Show them to me now.”

The man peels back his lips to reveal two crooked lines of teeth, and Chu lifts the automatic and snaps it forward precisely, using a corner of the grip to break one of the man's incisors. The man chokes off a scream and drops to one knee, a hand clapped over his bleeding mouth.

“You have thirty-one left,” Chu says, “and I'll break every one of them.” His face is as calm as that of someone who is reading an uninteresting book. “These people are my currency,” he says. “Shoot them and you're stealing from me. People who steal from me have short, unhappy lives, although I'm sure that many of them would like to die long before they're allowed to.” His eyes slide over to Miaow, still on the floor, and he says, “You. If you want to grow up, wipe your face and get back over there, where you belong.”

O
ne thing at a time.

He can only think about one thing at a time. If he doesn't focus, he'll be paralyzed. He won't know which direction to pursue.

Can't think about Miaow, Rose, and Noi. Can't think about his father. Can't worry about Colonel Chu.

What he can do right now is sit next to Peachy, in what must be the worst restaurant in Bangkok, and look through the window at the bank.

“It's the wrong man,” Peachy says for the second time. This time she yanks at his sleeve to drive the point home. “They're talking to the wrong man.”

“What a surprise,” Rafferty says. “Since it's Petchara who pointed him out.”

The only thing in the restaurant's plus column is a tinted front window, covered with a reflective film on the outside, installed to keep the afternoon sun from roasting the diners before they die of food poisoning.

Rafferty is thankful to be unobserved, although no one on the other side of the street is exercising much vigilance. He and Peachy might as well be standing on the sidewalk in Ronald McDonald costumes and waving. Elson hasn't looked up in a quarter of an hour. After ten minutes of bullying the teller through the glass divider, he did his
CSI
wallet flip and was led to the other side of the partition, where he shooed the teller off his stool and took control of the man's computer. He attacked it like a finalist in the Geek Olympics, occasionally shaking his head in impatience. The teller hovers anxiously, literally wringing his hands, while Petchara and the other cop stand around on the lobby side of the glass in the loose-jointed stance of people with nothing to do.

The most attentive person in the bank is the teller Peachy identified as the one who passed her the bad bills. He sits bolt upright at his station, three windows down, his eyes darting everywhere, a man following the flight of an invisible hummingbird. His pallor is evident even under the bank's fluorescent lights.

Elson stands, shoving the stool back, his finger jammed accusingly against the computer screen. He snaps a question. From behind him a man in a wrinkled suit, who seems to be the branch manager, ducks his head several times. If he had a cap, Rafferty thinks, he'd doff it and tug his forelock. Without turning away from the computer, Elson says something, and the manager scurries off.

“I don't understand,” Peachy says.

“Sure you do.” Rafferty sips his coffee, made from some instant left over from World War II and three times the suggested amount of water. “They did everything they could to keep Elson away from the bank. We screwed that up, so now they're keeping him away from the man who knows where the money came from.”

Peachy says, “Oh.”

Outside, a young woman wearing the blue skirt and white blouse of a Thai high-school girl, a stack of books clasped to her chest, dawdles indolently up to the window, exuding the flat rejection of the entire planet that characterizes teens everywhere. There's nowhere in the world, her stance says, that she wants to go, and she isn't even eager not to get there. She stops and leans wearily against the window with her back to Rafferty, giving him an excellent view of her shoulders and her
long, straight black hair. If she were transparent, he could see Elson, but as it is, he can't.

“That's funny,” Peachy says.

“Not very,” Rafferty says, craning to see around the girl.

“She shouldn't be standing there. She's very pale. Why would she stand in the sun like that?” Thais are keenly aware of skin color, with the pale end of the spectrum being the most desirable.

“Pale, is she?” Rafferty asks, being polite. He still can't see Elson, but the bank manager comes into view from some office somewhere, carrying a cardboard box full of small pieces of papers—deposit slips, Rafferty would guess.

“Pale as a Chinese,” Peachy says, and makes a
tsk-tsk
sound. She puts her fingers to her cheek. “She's going to
ruin
her skin. Prem always says—”

Rafferty says, “Chinese?” He leans forward and raps the glass twice, sharply, with his ring.

The girl turns and smiles. It is Ming Li. She gives him a snotty little schoolgirl wave, just the tips of her fingers, and heads for the door.

In the bank across the street, Elson is also waving, waving a piece of paper beneath the nose of the unfortunate teller. The teller takes it, and his face falls. He looks at Elson, and his shoulders rise and drop down again, the universal gesture for
Huh?
Then Elson does a
Come here
gesture to the cops and holds out his hand for the slip.

“Food any good?” Ming Li slips into the booth.

“Depends,” Rafferty says, watching the bank. “When was the last time you ate?”

“Last night. We had to be at the warehouses pretty early.”

“Not long enough,” Rafferty says. “Give it a week and come back.”

Ming Li studies Rafferty's plate. “What have you got?”

He ignores her, intent on the scene across the street, but she bangs the edge of the plate with a fork as a prompt, and he says, “Gristle, fat, elderly tomatoes, and some sort of roots with dirt on them.”

“Yum,” Ming Li says. She picks up his chopsticks, dips them in his water glass, and wipes them on a napkin. He turns to watch her tweeze some shreds of meat and put them into her mouth. She chews experimentally and swallows. “Awful,” she says, taking more.

Peachy jams a finger into his arm and says, “Look.”

Elson has brought the teller out of the enclosure and into the lobby area. The two cops pat the man down, then take him by the elbows and steer him toward the doors to the sidewalk. Elson follows, being trailed by the bank manager, who's obviously protesting. Something he says stops Elson, and the Secret Service man turns to him. The two of them have a somewhat heated exchange.

“Do you know about the other guy?” Ming Li asks with her mouth full.

“The other guy,” Rafferty says.

“I knew you hadn't spotted him. I passed him a couple of times, just leaning against a building a couple of shops up and looking through that same window. Big, broad in the shoulders, maybe some kind of weight lifter. Looks like a steroids poster. Scarred face, broken nose. Maybe Chinese, maybe Korean.”

“You passed him twice? And he didn't see you?”

“Actually,” Ming Li says, using her fingers to scrub dirt from the roots of whatever she's eating, “I passed him three times. And no, he didn't see me. Why would he? You didn't.”

“You didn't pass me three times.”

“If you say so.” She wipes her fingers on the napkin and looks at the smear of dirt. “Can I have some of your coffee?”

“It's not actually coffee,” Rafferty says. “It's a cup that might have held coffee in 1973, and hot water has been poured into it.”

Ming Li picks it up and drinks anyway. Then she looks down at the cup and says, “That's
nasty
.” She reviews the word for a moment and says, “Nasty? Is that what they say?”

Looking out the window, Rafferty says, “Is that what who says?” Elson, his argument over, makes an impatient wave at Petchara and the other cop, and they hustle the teller through the doors.

Ming Li gives Rafferty a little whuffing sound to indicate how obvious it is. “Those hip-hop singers on MTV.”

As the doors close behind him, Elson calls for the others to wait, pulls out a cell phone, and punches a number.

Rafferty says, “I'm not really the go-to guy on hip-hop. If you want to know anything about OFR, though, I'm your man.”

“What's OFR?”

“Old Fart Rock.”

“No, thanks. Except, how long do you think until the Rolling Stones are doing ads for Viagra? Maybe use that song—what's it called?—‘Start Me Up.'”

“The young are so cruel.”

Ming Li is watching Elson and his crew approach the corner, the teller arguing at every step. “So we're not going to follow those guys?”

“They're not going anyplace interesting. See the guy three seats away from the empty window?”

Ming Li counts chairs. “The one with the wet shirt?”

“Him,” Rafferty says. “I think
he's
going someplace interesting. And my guess is that your steroids guy is going there, too.” He glances at his watch. “About forty-five minutes left. Can you get Leung here?”

Ming Li picks up some more of the greens between her chopsticks, touches the roots, and rubs her fingers together. “I know they grow vegetables in dirt, but this is silly.”

“Leung,” Rafferty repeats. “Can you get Leung here?”

“He's here already,” she says. She chews, and he can hear the grit between her teeth. “If you can't see Leung, it means he's here.”

 

FORTY MINUTES LATER,
Rafferty says, “This is it.” He is watching the bank. “You straight with it?”

“Sure,” Ming Li says. “Leung's half a block from here, on the other side of the big guy. I dawdle my way up there, looking demure and harmless. Just chillin'.”

“Jesus,” Rafferty says.

“So the big guy's between us, in the tweezers,” Ming Li says. “That's what Frank calls it, the tweezers. You and Peachy pick up the teller. Then we see what happens.”

“Okay, good,” Rafferty says. “Are you armed?”

Ming Li lifts the cover of the book on top of her stack to reveal a recessed square cut into the pages. Nestled into it is a small automatic, maybe a twenty-five-millimeter. It's been blued, but the bluing has worn off around the grip and trigger guard to reveal the shine of steel. It's seen some use. “School's fierce. Got to watch out for the homeys.”

“And you can shoot that thing?”

“Better than I can pitch.”

The lights in the bank lobby flicker and dim, and the manager opens the door for the last couple of customers.

“Here we go,” Rafferty says, but Ming Li is already out the door. He throws some bills on the table. A moment later the bank door opens again, and two men and a woman exit. The last one out is the man they want. Peachy says, “I'm not sure I can do this.”

“I'm not sure you can either,” Rafferty says. “But I haven't got anybody else.”

T
he little wet man's coming toward us,” Ming Li says on the phone. “Don't turn the corner. He looks over his shoulder all the time.”

“What are you doing?”

“We're standing here. I'm a rich schoolgirl on the phone, and Leung is my faithful servant. He just took the books so I could make a call, and now he's standing a respectful distance away, appropriate to our class difference.
Ouch.
”

“What happened?” Rafferty and Peachy are stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, people parting left and right to get around them.

“Leung pinched me.”

“You had it coming. What I mean is, why are you with Leung? You're supposed to be on either side of the big guy. What happened to the old tweezers?”

“He noticed me. Looked at me a couple of times. Probably got a thing for schoolgirls. So I had to pass him. Don't worry, he's written
me off. He's watching your little wet man, and the little wet man keeps looking behind him.”

“I need to know everything they do.”

“Gosh,” Ming Li says. “Everything? I'm just a girl.”

“This is the big leagues.”

“Okay, here he comes. The big one. I think you can come around the corner now.”

Rafferty grabs Peachy's sleeve and hauls her behind him, with Peachy apologizing to everyone they bump into. They round the corner, and Rafferty sees the big man take the arm of the teller and drag him to the curb. There is a quick verbal exchange, the big man bending down to get his face close to the teller's, and the teller nods eight or nine times, very fast, and then attempts some sort of argument, which is broken off when the big man shakes him like a rag mop. The teller looks like he is going to burst into tears. Then the big man reaches into his suit coat, and the teller mirrors the movement. Each comes up with a manila envelope.

Ten or twelve yards beyond them, Ming Li chatters brightly into her phone, right foot lifted and hooked behind the white sock on the left ankle. With her free hand, she toys with her hair, rolling a wisp of it between her fingers as though nothing in the world were more urgent than split ends.

The men exchange envelopes.

“Ming Li. You and Leung stay with the big guy. I don't care what it takes, don't lose him.”

“Big brother,” Ming Li says. “I've been training for this all my life.”

“Good. Keep your phone on.”

The big man gives the teller a shove, just enough to make him stagger back a step, and heads off down the sidewalk. He passes Ming Li and Leung without a glance but then sneaks a look back at Ming Li. The teller exhales heavily, wipes his face, and pulls out a cell phone.

“Go, Peachy,” Rafferty says.

Reluctantly Peachy covers the distance to the teller, as slowly as someone navigating a forest of thorns. She has lifted a hand to touch him politely on the shoulder when he looks up and sees her. The cell phone drops from his hand and hits the pavement, and the battery pops out. He takes a quick step back, mouth open, as though Peachy
has fangs, claws, and a snake's forked tongue. A second backward step brings him up against Rafferty. Rafferty has already pulled his wallet out, and when the man whirls to face him, Rafferty lets it drop open and then flips it closed again before the man can register that the shiny object inside it is a large silver cuff link.

“Give me the envelope,” Rafferty says in Thai.

Half a dozen emotions chase each other across the teller's face, but the one that stakes it out and claims it is despair. He slowly closes his eyes and reaches into his jacket. Eyes still shut, he holds it out. Rafferty takes it, opens it, looks inside, sees the bright new money, and says into the phone, “You still with the big guy?”

“He's waiting outside another bank, half a block down,” Ming Li says. “I'm putting my hair up.”

“Gee, that's interesting.”

“Well, who knew he liked schoolgirls? Probably hangs around playgrounds. Leung has a different jacket for me, too. And some glasses. I'll look like an office lady.”

“Good,” Rafferty says. “If he meets someone, let Leung take the one he meets, and you stay with the big guy. When Leung's got whoever he talks to, I want him to call me. You just follow the Chinese guy—”

“I think he's Korean.”

“I don't care if he's a Tibetan Sherpa. You stay with him. I mean this, Ming Li, you can't lose him. He could be your father's emergency exit.”

“Poke?” Ming Li says.

He brings the phone back to his ear. “What?”

“He's your father, too.” She hangs up.

Rafferty stares down at the phone and then dials Arthit's number.

 

HEADLIGHTS ARE BLOSSOMING
on the oncoming cars. Arthit reaches down and flips on his own.

“There has to be more than one teller at each bank,” Arthit says. He is balancing two fat manila envelopes in his lap as he drives. “No single teller could pass a quarter of a million in one day.”

The two envelopes, one taken from the little wet teller and the other from the teller the Korean grabbed outside the second bank, contain a
total of five hundred thousand baht in brand-new counterfeit bills, plus thirty-eight thousand dollars in bogus American hundreds.

“I was wondering about that,” Rafferty says. He has his cell phone against one ear, with Ming Li on the other end, but he is talking to Arthit. “Elson found something at the other teller's station. Probably the distributor—the Korean weight lifter—contacts only one teller directly, and that teller gives it to the others. So Petchara handed Elson someone who has no idea where the junk money comes from. As much as that might interest Elson, I don't give a shit. I personally don't care about the mechanics. What I care about is what we're going to do with the money.”

“Which is what?” Arthit asks.

“I'm thinking about that.”

“Americans are so collaborative.” Arthit makes a turn against an oncoming stream of traffic, and Rafferty closes his eyes. Leung, alone in the backseat, laughs. On Rafferty's cell phone, Ming Li says, “I'm pretty sure he's finished.”

“Why?”

“He's home, I think. A guesthouse, two stories. A light just went on, second floor right.”

“You're extremely good.”

“Tell that to Frank. He'd like to hear it.”

“I will. Where are you?”

“Soi 38, half a block off Sukhumvit.”

“We'll be there in—” He looks out the window. Neon signs glow above the sidewalks now, beacons in the premature dusk. Arthit hits the switch for the wipers, and for what seems like the thousandth time since Rose and Miaow were taken, Rafferty inhales the sharp smell of newly wet dust. He locates a landmark. “Make it ten, twelve minutes.”

“It's a shame we couldn't get the third teller,” Ming Li says.

“We got two,” Rafferty says. “That's two more than we had an hour ago.”

“We should have had Frank with us.”

“No. Frank needs to stay where he is. He's out of sight, and he needs to stay out of sight.”

“He must be going crazy.”

“Call him,” Rafferty says. “Let him know what's happening.”

“I don't know what's happening.”

Rafferty says, “Why should you be different?” He hangs up.

“Where?” Arthit says.

“Soi 38. Can you get us some help there?”

“Cops?” Arthit's reluctance is both visible and audible.

“Unless you have connections with the army.”

Arthit brakes behind a bus and drums his fingers impatiently against the wheel. “Do we think he's alone?”

“We don't have the faintest idea.”

“It's hard to believe,” Arthit says, cutting around the bus, “but I'm slowly becoming comfortable with that condition.” He picks up his own cell phone. “I can get three I'd trust to keep things to themselves.”

As Arthit dials, Leung leans forward in the backseat. “What's in the other envelopes? The ones the big guy kept.”

Rafferty turns to him, feeling the stiffness of exhaustion in his neck and shoulders. “My guess is that it's real money. The tellers pass the bad stuff and pocket good bills to balance it out. Say you withdraw five thousand baht. They give you five thousand in counterfeit and then pull the same amount out of the cash drawer and put it into the envelope. They've got the withdrawal slip, the drawer is minus the right amount of money, and they've passed the counterfeit. Everything adds up at the end of the day, and Mr. Korea's envelope is full of real money.”

“
Yes,
now,” Arthit says into his cell phone. “Soi 38, stay out of sight.”

“And they keep the tellers quiet by threatening their families,” Rafferty says. “Poor schmucks.”

“Schmucks?” Arthit says, dropping the phone onto the seat. “Is ‘schmucks' English?”

“English is a polyglot tongue,” Rafferty says. “A linguistic hybrid enriched by grafts from many branches of the world's verbal tree.”

Arthit nods gravely. “Thank you, Doctor.”

“Anything I can do,” Rafferty says, closing his eyes and leaning back, “to illuminate the path of the ignorant with the torch of knowledge.”

“He talk like this a lot?” Leung asks.

“Inexhaustibly,” Arthit says. “If bullshit were oil, Poke would be OPEC.”

Rafferty, eyes still closed, says, “I think this is going to work, Arthit.”

“What's going to work?”

“I don't know yet.” He feels himself start to drift sideways, like a boat on a tide, and forces his eyes open. He turns to Arthit. “But look what we've got. Half a million bad baht plus almost forty thousand counterfeit U.S., and probably more where that came from. We know where the women and Miaow are, where Chu is. We've got—maybe—a couple of people inside, unless those two cops get really stupid. We didn't have any of that eight hours ago. I've got a door opener for Elson, if I can figure out how to use it.”

Arthit says, “Why would you want to?”

“Weight. Just plain old weight.”

“A bullet weighs a lot if you put it in the right place,” Leung says. “Why not just kick the door in? Get your women. Kill Chu.”

“We might,” Rafferty says. “But if we do, I want to make sure one more time that they're where we think they are. And I want to know who's holding the gun on them.”

“There's one thing we don't have,” Arthit says. “Time.”

“Yeah,” Rafferty says. His watch says they have less than three hours left. “Right now I'd trade rubies for time.”

 

HALF AN HOUR LATER,
Rafferty, Ming Li, Leung, and Arthit sit in Arthit's car, around the corner from the Korean's guesthouse. Water from Ming Li's long hair is dripping onto the upholstery, sounding like a leak in the car's roof. Arthit has a window cracked open so he can smoke.

“My hair is going to stink,” Ming Li says, waving the smoke away.

“Be glad it's not a pipe,” Arthit says.

“You should really quit.” She is haloed by the headlights of the police car that has pulled up to the curb behind them. The wet skin on her neck gleams. Two of Arthit's most trusted cops sit in the second car while a third, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, sits behind the wheel of a
tuk-tuk
and waits in the rain outside the guesthouse, keeping an eye on the door.

“You know, quitting is at the very top of my to-do list,” Arthit says. “Right after I get my wife back and ice Colonel Chu. Oh, and figure
out what to do about this counterfeiting thing.” He looks at his wrist, flips the watch around so he can see it, and says, “He'll call any minute now.”

“Why don't you buy a shorter band?” Rafferty asks.

“It gives me character, makes me memorable,” Arthit says. “The same way some men wear bow ties.”

“That's kind of sad,” Ming Li says, wringing out her hair. “Why don't you get some cowboy boots or something? Or let your eyebrows grow together above your nose?”

“This is a carefully calculated affectation,” Arthit says. “It calls attention to the weight of my very masculine watch. It shows that I care what time it is but I'm not obsessed with it. It has a certain enviable flair.”

“What it does,” Ming Li says, “is make you look like a kid who borrowed his father's watch.”

“Speak right up,” Arthit says. “No need to be deferential.”

“It is
so
not the bomb,” Ming Li says. To Rafferty she says, “Did I get that right?”

“It's about as dated as Crosby, Stills and Nash.”

Ming Li says, “Well, how am I supposed to know? I'm from
China,
for heaven's sake.”

Rafferty's phone rings, and when he opens it, Chu says, “Where is he?”

“No idea.”

“That's very sad. My watch says—”

“The nice thing about watches,” Rafferty says over him, “is that you can reset them. They've got that little stem you can turn, right next to the three.”

Chu's voice is cold enough to lower the temperature in the car. “And why would I do that?”

“Because you have to. Frank just called me. He'll meet me at five-thirty in the morning.”

“Where?”

“He didn't say.”

“When
will
he say?”

“He'll call me at five.”

Rafferty can almost hear Chu thinking. “It sounds like he doesn't trust you.”

“Probably afraid I take after him.”

“Why so early?”

“My guess would be he thinks it'll be easier to tell whether anyone's with me.”

“I don't like it.”

“I'm not crazy about it either.”

“Get him to change it.”

“You think I didn't try that already?”

Chu says, “This feels wrong.” Rafferty can hear people in the background and the clatter of dishes and silverware. Chu is in a restaurant.