The Hot Countries (18 page)

19

Face Powder

Rafferty is
alone
in the empty apartment, taking advantage of the solitude and half hoping Varney will burst through the door so Rafferty can shoot him. His Glock gleams on his desk, loaded and freshly wiped clean of Rose's face powder, which has a way of sifting down through the tiny seams in their headboard and into the compartment concealed there, where the Glock is locked away when it's not needed. He wonders how many other guys' guns smell like face powder.

His suitcase, battered by hundreds of thousands of miles, yawns open on the couch. There's nothing in it, not even his shaving kit, but, he thinks, it's a beginning. He's actually pulled the suitcase out of the closet and carried it in here. He went into the bathroom and found the kit. While in there, he put into the kit the packet of moist paper towelettes that Rose uses on her face every night and had forgotten. Then he left the kit in the bathroom, but still. Surely all of that counts for something.

Rose's clean face. The scrubbed face of the girl with the birthmark, violently scrawled with makeup. Rafferty has a quick impulse to snatch up the gun and head out into the deepening dusk in the hope that Varney will materialize in his sights. He hates the man enough to pull the trigger and worry about the consequences later.

Five or six sheets of paper are littered any old which way across his desk. They all have lists on them, or rather they have variations of the same list, representing attempts to think ahead and plan for contingencies: if
this
, then
that
. So far they're rich in
if-this
entries and short on
then-thats.
Here and there a sketchy skull and crossbones occupies the space where a
then-that
is called for. The page with the most writing on it contains a rant he scribbled minutes ago to get it off his chest, using the kind of language that long ago would have earned him a slap from his half-Filipina mother.

He pulls back, gratefully, from the matter at hand to speculate idly how his mother is. She'd been abandoned twice in the little stone house in the desert outside Lancaster, California, where Poke had grown up—first by Poke's father and then, a few years later, by Poke, when he went into the wide world to find a place he could pretend was home. In their absence she's remade herself into a real-estate agent who enjoys surprising success hawking sandy acres in the desert to people fleeing the skyrocketing cost of housing in Los Angeles or in areas with other attractions to recommend them. Water, for instance.

The last time Rafferty saw her, she'd seemed like someone who'd been created to be viewed from a distance, her once-mercurial personality bottled firmly inside a surface so shiny it looked enameled. He'd meant to stay for a week, but it was evident after one eternal meal that he and his mother had little to say to each other, and he'd flown back across the Pacific the next day, without anything deeper than formal regret on either side.

She'd started life as Angela Obregon, and after eighteen crowded years as Angie Rafferty, wife and mother, she was Angela Obregon again, a steely solitary, and she didn't need anyone.

Unlike Poke. He knows exactly who he needs, he's got them, and he's not going to let anyone take them away from him.

He picks up a sheet he'd laid aside, which Miaow had found a use for. She'd been practicing her autograph in the Latin alphabet, wandering freely between ornate filigree and severe simplicity. There are multiple variations on each of her names: Miaow Rafferty and, more often, Mia Rafferty, along with a new one (to him) Moira Swan, which he hopes is a passing enthusiasm. At the bottom, in her crimped, tentative, everyday hand, are the names
Philip Rafferty
and
Kwan Rafferty
. Each name is written three times.

When he'd first seen that his name and Rose's had shouldered their way into this hand-scrawled fantasy of fame, he'd been taken unawares. He'd had to blink a couple of times to clear his vision.

That was when he'd gotten up to get his gun.

The apartment
is
smaller than it should be with a baby on the way, but it's housed the only real family he's ever had. He'll say goodbye to it reluctantly, but everything that's been important to him here—that small, unbreakable unit of three (or four, or five)—will remain intact. Whenever he thinks about it, he's dazzled by the sheer improbability of the three of them finding and recognizing each other across distance, language, culture, belief, and expectations, and all of them realizing what they could have, what they might be able to build together. Rose would chalk it up to karma, but Rafferty thinks it was as random as winning a lottery.

So: the gun, face powder or no face powder, its easy pull, its matte-black ugliness, the weight of it in his hand. He's used it before, and the experience changed him forever, but he knows he can use it again. He has something he never thought he'd have, and no murderous son of a bitch with a mustache and yellow teeth is going to break it.

As he resumes packing, he thinks that Varney has at least made it clear to him what he'll do to protect the union between him, Rose, and Miaow. And what he'll do is anything.

20

A Starter Mansion for a Camel Trader

The emotion he'd
experienced in the apartment had been an odd mixture, a sort of grim intent wrapped around love. The early-evening traffic, a series of long waits interrupted by short jerks forward, and the sight of Pradya, the daytime thug, looking out of place in an armchair in the hotel lobby and failing to notice Rafferty coming through the revolving door, brings the grimness
to the fore. By the time he slips his card into the slot on the door to
their room, he's feeling as if the ideal dinner would be something he'd personally killed.

“We want to eat upstairs,” Rose announces the moment Rafferty drops his suitcase onto the thick carpet. “It's fancy.” She's gotten dressed up, for her, in long jeans and a top with three-quarter sleeves the color of a cyclamen, which makes her skin look like it's been dusted with gold.

“Can I sit for a minute?”

“You can have
five
minutes if you want.” She turns to the window that runs the full length of the room. “Look,” she says. “This view is so much nicer than ours.”

“When I can get up, I'll look.” He sinks into the couch and then sinks some more. “Jesus,” he says. “What is this, quicksand?”

“Isn't it
nice
?” Rose says. She's pulling the drapes all the way open so Rafferty can get the full effect of the panorama. “It's much softer than the one we've got, and it's so
pretty
.”

“It is?” The couch is covered in cream-colored cloth with broad, shiny crimson stripes running down it like gift-wrap ribbon. Fleurs-de-lis gleam here and there, woven with some reflective synthetic thread into the cream areas. Stand the couch on end and revolve it, he thinks, and you'd have a giant barber pole. Looking around the room, he realizes he had completely forgotten, perhaps in self-defense, what it looks like.

What it looks like is the waiting room for the Marie Antoinette Salon in an expensive brothel, where you sit until you're permitted to enter the queen's chamber, with the trick guillotine over the bed. The couch takes up much of the wall to the left of the door, giving him a good view of the huge, over-decorated living room, dominated by the long window. Fluffy Chinese approximations of Persian rugs smother the floor, and on the walls are pinkish paintings done in the kind of faux–French impressionist style so popular in convalescent hospitals the world around.

Rose, who has been waiting for his reaction, says, “You don't like it?”

“The whole place,” he says, hearing the sourness in his voice, “looks like a starter mansion for a camel trader.”

“I see,” Rose says, and his heart plummets at her tone. He'd been too self-involved to hear the excitement at the view in her voice. He hadn't heard the yearning for a sofa like the one he's still sinking into.

“I'm sorry,” he says, trying to get up. His apology, which was to have included bounding across the room and masterfully taking her in his arms, gets lost in an awkward attempt to free himself from the couch's embrace.

“I know I don't have very good taste,” Rose begins.

“No, no,” he says, trying to stand. “Please—”

“But I'm here—
we're
here—because of you, and you could at least let me try to enjoy it.”

“Wait, I didn't mean—” He scoots as far forward on the cushion as he can, puts both palms flat on the table, leans over them, and pushes down, trying for leverage against the infinitely yielding couch.

“After the baby's born,” Rose says, “and we have a new place, you can do
all
the decorating so he or she has a chance of developing your wonderful taste. We wouldn't want it to like the same awful things Miaow and I do.”

“I'm sorry,” he says, launching himself from the table, and to his surprise, he's standing. “I'm a snob and a jerk, and I feel terrible about what I just said, and I've had a wretched day, and
 . . .
and, boy, you're right, that's quite a view, isn't it?” He edges left, between the couch and the table, which is too close to it to permit easy movement. “I'll just come on over there, and we'll look at it together.”

Rose says something in Thai that translates roughly into “hopeless,” but at least she seems a little less offended, and then, through the door that leads to the bedroom she chose, Miaow emerges and says, “What are you doing?”

“I'm escaping from the couch,” he says, and looks up to see, behind Miaow, a teenage Caucasian boy of remarkable beauty with a flop of pale hair falling over his left eyebrow so perfectly that Rafferty figures a squad of angels sneaks into the kid's room every morning while he's asleep, just to arrange it. Rafferty says, “Hey there.”

“This is my father,” Miaow says, and it sounds like a confession. “This is Andrew—I mean, Ned. I
mean,
” she concludes through her teeth,
“Edward.”

“Nice to meet you, Ed,” Rafferty says, getting away from the couch.

“Edward,” Edward says.

“Right,” Rafferty puts on a smile, because it allows him to bare his teeth. “And why are you here, Edward?”

“We're
rehearsing
, Dad,” Miaow says. “We open on Thursday, remember?”

“You're
that
Ned,” Rafferty says, “the Ned in the play.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I played Ned once, when I was your age.”

“Yes?” Edward says with an absolutely total lack of interest.

“Miaow's got the good part, though.” Rafferty is determined to keep the conversation going, if only to keep himself from throwing the kid through the window, into Rose's lovely view.

Edward's forehead wrinkles and he says, “Miaow?” just as Miaow says, “
Mia.
My name is—”

“Sorry.
Mia.
Of course, Mia.” Moved by sheer malice, Rafferty says, “We call her Miaow sometimes, her mother and I, because she's our little kittycat. Maybe this time next month it'll be Moira.” He sees Miaow's eyes widen in surprise. “It's like having triplets.”

“Where did you—” Miaow begins.

“Sorry, Mia,” Rafferty says. “In fact, I might as well apologize to everyone all at once. Make a clean sweep. We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot.” He heads for the door to usher the kid out. “But it's been great to meet you, Edward, and I hope you get home safely.”

Edward looks at Miaow. Miaow closes her eyes against the reality of the moment and says, “Edward's going to dinner with us.”

“Ahhh,” Rafferty says. “Well. Great. Peachy. Should have thought of that myself.”

Edward says, “Mia said you did.” Miaow's face is flaming.

“Did she, now?” Rafferty says, happy that his daughter isn't armed. “Well, Ed, if the triplets said so, it must be true.”

His phone warbles at him, and the readout says
leon
. “You guys go ahead,” he says. “I need to get this.”

21

Three Questions

It says:

If you're worried about protecting her, ask yourself three questions:

Did you know that C-4 plastique, the explosive in Murphy's closet, can't be exploded by setting it on fire?

Did you know that all the gas burners on the stove and in the oven had been turned on high without engaging the pilot flames? By the time the fire reached it, the kitchen was a bomb.

The person who did this knew there were people in the house but she did it anyway. Who do you think that person was?

He's read it three times, and every time he reads it, he hears Treasure stammering over the story about Varney saying he wouldn't be able to smell escaping gas. Almost unable to finish the sentence.

“And you found this—” he begins.

“In here,” Hofstedler says yet again, tugging at his shirt pocket. “I checked my money, and—”

“Did someone brush up against you?”

“But of course,” Hofstedler says. “Wallace, you remember, I said to that man, ‘Why you aren't looking where you are going?'”

“Word for word,” Wallace says heavily. He's nursing a beer as though he plans to make it last. His eyes are cloudy and loose in their sockets, roaming the room but not really fixing on anything. He seems to be on the other side of an invisible wall. Down at the end of the bar, on his usual stool far from everyone, Campeau listens with interest.

“What did he look like?”

“Like anybody,” Hofstedler says. Like the others in the bar, he pays close attention to the appearance of Thai females, but the males blend into a dark-skinned crowd, extras on the set, differentiated mainly by the color of their T-shirts. “Like a vendor, perhaps, or a tout.”

“He was skinny, the way Thais are,” Wallace says. “And dark. Combed his hair up into that stupid ridge in the center that guys do now. Looks like the flame on a match.”

“Where was it?”

“Back there.” Hofstedler gestures in the direction of Surawong.

“I know, Leon, but how
far
back there? How close to the bar? Was it obvious that you were coming in here?”

“Naw,” Wallace says. “Farther back. And I know what you're thinking.”

“What?” Hofstedler says. “What he is thinking?”

“He's thinking that whoever it was, he recognized you and knew you'd call Poke.”

Hofstedler nods. “Aaahhhh.”

“So what's the big deal?” Campeau says. “Varney knows what you look like.”

Wallace says, “Varney wasn't there.”

“How can you know?” Hofstedler demands. “You were talking to me.”

“I was looking,” Wallace says. “One thing I'm still good at, looking.”

Hofstedler is shaking his head. “The street was full,” he says. “If you could see him, I would have—”

“No disrespect,” Wallace says, “but you could miss somebody in a closet. I did nothing for four years except look around.” He moistens his lips with the beer, without swallowing. “And there was another one, farther up the block. He spotted us first. We were handed off, one to the other. There was probably another at the other end, in case we went in that way. How I'd do it anyways.”

“I did not see
two
?” Hofstedler seems stricken.

“This is what I can do,” Wallace says. “I kept people alive doing it.” He puts the beer down and looks at it.

“Well, this makes me good and nervous,” Rafferty says.

“It should,” Wallace says.

Over him, Rafferty says, “The night that boy was killed. Someone saw Varney take a picture or two just before the boy ran by and I chased him.”

Hofstedler says, “A picture of you?”

“Yeah. Problem is, when he took the picture, I was standing with you and Wallace.”

“But this means—” Hofstedler begins. His face is all eyes.

“That he's got us, too,” Wallace says. “And like I said, Poke, you should be nervous.”

“And maybe so should we,” Hofstedler says.

“He's never going to stop watching you,” Wallace says to Poke. His words come slowly and evenly, almost without emphasis. “I figured out who he is. Ernie told me.”

“Wallace,” Hofstedler says, putting a hand on the man's arm. “Ernie is dead.”

“Goddamn you, Leon, I know that.” Wallace shrugs off Leon's hand so abruptly that he sloshes his beer onto the bar. Instantly Toots is there, mopping it up and saying, “Wallet, Wallet, no problem, Wallet.”

“It
is
a fucking problem when your friends think you've lost it,” Wallace says, pulling his glass out of Toots's reach, since she's trying to refill it. “I know he's dead, Leon. He told me in a dream.”

“A dream,” Leon says despairingly.

“Let him talk,” Rafferty says. “Wallace, let Toots top you off, would you? Just to be polite.”

“Sorry, Toots,” Wallace says. “It was my goddamn dream, Leon, and it was Ernie I dreamed about because Ernie died like that, he was
gutshot
. That's why it was Ernie who reminded me about Hartley, this guy from 'Nam. Because Hartley and this asshole with the mustache are the same guy—no, no, not like that,” he says to Poke, who shows signs of interrupting. “Not literally, but they might as well be. They like the same things. Before, I said Hartley was a back-shooter, and he was, but it was worse than that: he aimed low. He wanted to kill slow, and he wanted it to hurt, and that's who this other asshole, Varney, is. He's a back-shooter
and
a gut-shooter, I'd be willing to bet on it. You want to stay way far away from him.”

“Too late for that,” Rafferty says. “He's chosen me.”

“Then I'll tell you what, Poke,” Wallace says. “He's sighting you. Right now, all the time. He's got eyes on you, wherever you go. He
likes
sighting. Hartley shot like a son of a bitch, he could hit anything within a few square inches of where he aimed, and he'd wait longer to take a shot than anyone I ever saw. He'd miss good shots, just to stretch out the fun of waiting, and then he'd take exactly the shot he wanted to take, and what he wanted was the abdomen, where the most pain and the slowest, filthiest dying are. He brought down one VC after another, and he never got as high as the rib cage. He intends to hurt you before he kills you, Poke, and he'll wait for fucking ever to do it.”

“Varney and Hartley,” Poke says.

“Twins,” Wallace says. “And you can't wait him out, because he likes the waiting. What you gotta do, you gotta dangle it in front of him. Whatever it is, you gotta dig a big pit, fill it with snakes and spikes, stand on the other side, and just dangle that fucker. Make him come to you and then cut him into little pieces.”

“Can't do it.”

Wallace sits back, visibly disengaging. “Up to you.”

“I'm not blowing you off, Wallace. He wants two things. One of them I don't have, and the other is a person.”

Wallace says, “I didn't tell you to
give
'em to him. I said
dangle
'em, or something that looks like them, to bring him up close. Because otherwise he's going to be behind you until you're trying to stuff your guts back into your shirt.”

Outside the bar he stands, shifting from one foot to the other as he tries to spot whoever has been assigned to watch him. He supposes he was observed all the way down Patpong when he arrived, without even catching a hint.

He's got no idea how to protect Hofstedler and Wallace, if they need it. He's stretched pretty thin just looking after his family and Treasure.

Treasure.

Is Varney's note true or isn't it? Either way he needs to tell Arthit about it. Arthit needs to know that it's possible that the girl he's trying to adopt blew up that house believing that her father, her mother, Rafferty, and Rafferty's half sister, Ming Li, were inside it.

I'd believed she
liked
me
, Rafferty thinks. Or maybe she couldn't like anybody. The way she grew up
 . . .

And if Varney is telling the truth about Murphy's kitchen, that's information he could have gotten only from someone officially connected with the investigation, which Arthit had mentioned as a possibility all those weeks—no, only
four days
—ago.

He punches up Arthit's number, so hard he nearly knocks the phone out of his hand, but before he can say a word, Arthit says, “Treasure didn't come home with Anna. Anna waited for her and Chalee, but they didn't come down, and now she can't find them.”

“Maybe that's better,” Rafferty says.

“Anna is at the shelter, crying. Doesn't feel better to me.”

Scanning the street, Rafferty is sure he's located one of his watchers, a rickety-looking guy in a long gray coat three sizes too big, who's pawing without interest through a pile of women's clothes. “Did she tell the guy on watch to stay there?”

“She told mine,” Arthit says. “She hasn't seen yours.”

Rafferty feels a worm of uneasiness. The man in the gray coat catches him in mid-stare and turns away but shoots a look back over his shoulder. “He should have been there.”

“Maybe he got a better offer,” Arthit says. “Not the most dependable person in Bangkok.”

“I need to talk to you about something,” Rafferty says, searching the crowd for Varney. “But not now.”

“When?”

“Maybe tomorrow. We'll see. Go take care of Anna.”

“The only way to take care of Anna,” Arthit says, “is to make this go right somehow.”