A Nail Through the Heart

40

Clarissa Ulrich says, "I'm going home."

"I'm sorry, Clarissa," he says. The telephone is slippery in his hand. Superman turned off the air-conditioning while Rafferty was gone, and the apartment is stifling. He has been home half an hour, too exhausted to get up from the couch and start the air flowing.

"Sorry about what?"

"Sorry I couldn't do anything that helped. Sorry about what I did do. The filing cabinet." He hasn't told her about Doughnut, and he can't imagine that he will.

"I suppose I had to find out about him sooner or later," she says bravely. She sounds to Rafferty like a child who has survived a trip to the dentist, although he knows the comparison's not fair, that she has been permanently damaged, to use Rose's word, by what has happened to her in Bangkok. "Not much point in believing he was a good man if he wasn't."

The urge to offer comfort is overwhelming. "He was good to you. That counts for something."

"He was a man." Her voice seems to sour and curl at the edges. "That's about all he was."

There is a silence, which Rafferty uses to get to his feet and turn on the air-conditioning unit. It belches once and starts spewing hot air, rich with Bangkok exhaust. He stands in front of it, letting it hit him in the face. It smells better to him than the flowers. He never wants to smell another flower.

"I'm not necessarily finished, Clarissa," he says, although up to that moment he had figured he was.

"Please," she says. "You've been very sweet, but I don't need anything more. He's dead, or he might as well be. And I'm alive, and I have to figure out what to do about that. He's not coming home, not ever." Her voice is thin as a ribbon. "I shouldn't have come in the first place."

"You had to. You owed him that."

He can almost hear her shrug, see the expression on her face. "I guess."

"When do you go?"

"Tomorrow night. I couldn't get on a flight any sooner. Apparently there are lots of people who want to get out of here." A short laugh, more like a cough. "Can't imagine why."

"Well, maybe I can do something by then. Don't leave without calling me, okay?"

"What? What could you possibly do?"

Good question. "I'm still checking on a couple of things." One possibility occurs to him as he says the words, but it will require yet another favor of Arthit. At least this one won't threaten Arthit's career.

"I'll call," Clarissa says, "even if it's just to say thanks," and she hangs up.

Rafferty throws the telephone at the couch, harder than he means to, and then has to go pick it up and make sure it still has a dial tone. It does, but that doesn't make him feel any better. He puts the phone on the table and goes into the kitchen for a beer. It's still early for a drink, but what the hell. He's just let a triple murderer walk away without so much as a slap on the wrist and allowed her only innocent victim, Clarissa, to go home with her life shattered. He's about to put a good man in jail. He's inveigled his best friend into something that could endanger both his job and his wife. He's sending a woman-a dreadful, unforgivable woman, but a human being nonetheless-to her death. A beer sounds right. Give him a little perspective.

Chouk looks around when Rafferty stalks into the bedroom. The television is on, the screen full of writhing snakes. The Discovery Channel has come to Bangkok. He downs the beer in four long gulps, picks up the remote, and kills the TV, wishing there were a button that would make it explode. "Today," he says.

"As good as any other," Chouk says.

Rafferty scoots Chouk over as far as the constraints will permit. Then he unlocks the cabinet and shoves aside the stack of CD-ROMs from Claus Ulrich's apartment. The tidy pile collapses. Behind them is an envelope. He takes it out and drops it on the bed, relocks the cabinet, and hangs the chain with the key on it around his neck.

"The cop who's coming is okay," he says shortly. "You can trust him."

"I have to go to the bathroom," Chouk says.

"Yeah, I'd imagine you do. We're through with these things anyway." He goes around the bed, fumbling through his ring of keys until he finds the one for the cuffs. With the key in the lock, he pauses. "The kid didn't undo these, did he? He could probably unlock Buckingham Palace."

"No. He just brought me the food and fed it to me, and took the little girl to school," Chouk says. Rafferty unsnaps the cuff and lets it dangle from the bed frame. "He's a nice kid."

Rafferty straightens, feeling his back tighten and creak from sheer accumulated tension. "'Nice' may not be the precise word."

"Nice is for rich people," Chouk says, flexing his ruined hand to the limits of its mobility. To Rafferty it looks like a spasm. "The rest of us do the best we can."

Rafferty tears his eyes away from the hand. "Are you even remotely interested in what's going to happen to you today?"

"No." Chouk sits up stiffly. Dr. Ratt has untaped his arm from his side, but the ribs are still tightly wrapped. The white bandages make his torso look darker than mahogany. "Be right back." He takes tentative steps, heading for the bathroom.

Returning to the kitchen, Rafferty tosses the beer toward the trash can, misses, and kicks it with all his strength. It bounces off the wall and hits him in the shin, and he jumps into the air and lands on the can with both feet, mashing it flat. Then he kicks it again, and it slides under the stove.

"And fuck you, too," Rafferty says to it. "Stay there." He pulls open the refrigerator. "More perspective," he says, taking another beer. The doorbell rings.

Rafferty shifts the can of beer to his left hand and, just in case, pulls the gun with his right. He positions himself in front of the door, holding the gun at gut-shot level, and says, "It's not locked."

Arthit pushes the door open and looks from the gun to the beer. "Not a difficult choice," he says, taking the beer.

"You're early," Rafferty grumbles, heading back to the kitchen.

"Good morning to you, too. I would have brought you a Danish, but I thought it might endanger our relationship with Scandinavia."

Only two beers left, a Singha and an Angkor, from Cambodia, that Rafferty doesn't recall buying. He takes the Singha. The toilet flushes.

"Our boy?" Arthit says, leaning against the kitchen counter.

"Let's not be breezy," Rafferty says, ripping the tab off the can. "I can handle just about anything except breezy."

"I treasure these moments," Arthit says, and drinks. "When I look back on this part of my life, these little talks will be marked in yellow highlighter." He drinks again, crumples the can, and tosses. The can hits the wastebasket, a slam dunk, and Arthit regards Rafferty expectantly.

"Would you like my last beer?"

"Sure," Arthit says. "What else are you going to do with it?"

"Aren't you on duty or something?"

"The law never sleeps."

"Maybe not, but sometimes it sits for long periods of time with its eyes closed and its mouth open."

"Gosh, I hate to cut this short." Arthit pushes himself away from the counter. "There's never enough time in the day, is there?"

"Wait, Arthit. I've been talking with our murderer, and I think we can do this without getting you in trouble with the folks who are protecting Madame Wing."

"That's the nicest thing you've said all day." Arthit folds his hands in front of him, looking patient.

"It's very simple. You arrest him for Tam's murder and everybody just leaves Madame Wing out of it."

Arthit nods slowly, like someone who is too polite to disagree. "A ten-million-baht ransom, paid and shredded, a safe dug up in the backyard of a rich and powerful woman, something taken out of it that was apparently worth ten million baht, a guard who got paid off to let the thieves in-none of that's likely to surface. Not worth a mention."

"Totally extraneous," Rafferty says. "Didn't even happen. They were planning a crime, and they got drunk down near the river, which is why Tam was covered with mud. They got into a fight, and Chouk shot him."

"So it was a spat." Arthit clears his throat. "A falling-out among thieves."

"He was drunk. He's been regretting it ever since. That's why he's coming forward to confess, as you cops like to say. This is true, by the way. He wants to atone for what he did."

"And you can keep it that way?"

"Yeah. He'll play, and who else is going to volunteer information? Madame Wing? She's not going to be talking to anybody. Look, it's everything you could want: You get to arrest someone for Tam's murder-someone who actually did it, no less-there's lots of nice evidence, and you don't have to be the cop who links Tam's murder to the rich widow and all her inconvenient connections. They didn't even get around to the robbery. He just confesses and goes to jail."

"Does he have money for jail?"

"He will."

There is a pause long enough for Arthit to take his own temperature. "Poke," he says at last, "tell me you're not supplying it."

"Okay, Arthit, I'm not supplying it."

Arthit starts to say something, but he is cut off.

"Is this the one?" Chouk asks from the living room.

"Chouk, this is Arthit," Rafferty says, "and vice versa. You know which is which." A wave of dizziness overtakes him. "Why don't you two boys chat while I get rid of this beer?"

When he has finished vomiting the beer into the toilet, he washes his mouth out with Listerine and brushes his teeth hard enough to make his gums bleed. His mouth still tastes foul. He grabs the envelope from the bed and goes into the living room, where Chouk and Arthit have claimed the couch.

"Here." He pitches the envelope to Chouk. "That's fifteen hundred U.S. I'll have more in a couple of days."

"I can't take this," Chouk says, not touching it.

"It's Madame Wing's," Rafferty says. "The rest of it will be Madame Wing's, too. In a manner of speaking."

"You're going to want money in jail," Arthit says to Chouk. "It makes a big difference. A cell by yourself, maybe a carpet, a girl every now and then." He gets up and pulls the wrinkles out of his trousers. "Let's leave Mr. Sunshine here and get you to jail, where people are pleasant."

When they are gone, Rafferty sits absolutely still at his desk for the better part of fifteen minutes. He does a quick survey of his life and comes up with three shining exceptions to the landscape of flat tires, tin cans, and free-floating injury he's been inhabiting since his talk with Doughnut: Rose, Miaow's adoption, and the progress with Superman.

The moment Superman enters his mind, the phone rings.

"Poke?" Hank Morrison says. "Is this a good time?"

"Depends on you. Is there anything new?"

"I think I've got a guy at a school who'll take Superman," Morrison says. "But he's a little iffy. I think some shock therapy will push him over the edge. Do you still have those pictures?"

"Until I figure out how to throw them away. They're not something you toss in the trash."

"Well, e-mail me a couple of the ones with the boy in them. Nothing too hair-raising. I want to convince him, not give him a heart attack."

"Jesus, Hank, that means I have to look at them again."

"Up to you," Morrison says. "But it'll help."

"Hang on a minute." Rafferty gets up, phone in hand, and forces himself to go into the bedroom. The closed door to the safe looks far too benign, considering what it's hiding. Rafferty reluctantly puts his hand on the key hanging around his neck.

"Okay, Hank. Look for them in a few minutes, and for Christ's sake don't let anyone else open your e-mail."

"Thanks, Poke. I'm pretty sure this will do it."

Morrison hangs up, and Rafferty works the chain off his neck and opens the safe. The CDs slide out in a long spill across the surface of the bed. He flips open the cases as though they contained venomous snakes and finds the two he thinks the boy's photos will be on, then carries them back into the living room.

It takes him five or ten dreadful minutes to find what he's looking for. He chooses two from relatively early in the sequence, before the bestiality reached its crescendo, and mails them off. Then he closes the lid of the computer in self-defense and carries the cases back into the bedroom. As he gathers up the ones on the bed, he decides the best way to dispose of them will be to give them to Arthit and let the police destroy them. He feels slightly lighter as he relocks the safe.

Back in the living room, he realizes he wants to tell somebody about Hank's possible breakthrough. Miaow is in school. Arthit is at work. Superman isn't reachable, and Rafferty wouldn't tell him anyway without the matter being resolved. That leaves the person he really wants to talk to, and he dials Rose's cell number.

"Hello?" Her tone is brisk.

"How long has it been since I told you I love you?"

"Ah," she says, a bit coolly. "What a nice surprise."

"It is not. You've known it forever."

"Yes. I suppose I have."

"You're a world I want to enter," Rafferty says.

"And I'll hold the door."

"There's something I want to tell you."

"Something good?"

"I think so."

Rose covers the mouthpiece of the phone and says something. Then she says, "Can it wait?"

"Sure," Rafferty says. "You're somewhere where you can't talk."

"Absolutely correct."

"At Bangkok Domestics?"

"Actually," she says, "I'm at Peachy and Rose's Household Agency."

"Peachy?"

"The canned kind, I think. By the way, your last conversation was extremely productive. Just a complete about-face. You may recall that there had been a certain prickliness."

"On Peachy's end."

"Yes. Oh, and I remember having said something to you recently about keeping a cool heart. Well, a hot one works occasionally, too."

"Peachy and Rose, huh? That has a nice ring."

"And two more situations have been found for members of the labor pool. Turns out some people actually prefer attractive maids."

"I know I would."

"Oh, good," Rose says sweetly. "We can send you someone you already know. You won't even have to learn her name."

"Rose, our Cambodian guest is gone. You can come home."

"Hmmm. That means the bed is free?"

He is up and pacing, feeling better than he has all day. "Why not come right now? We'd have the place to ourselves."

"I'd love to." She lowers her voice. "You have no idea how much I'd love to." Back at a normal volume, she says, "We're meeting with a designer about the new letterhead and business cards, and then I've got two interviews to supervise."

"The demands of success," Rafferty says.

"A good businessperson puts business first."

"I guess she does."

"A good businessperson also pays her debts," Rose says. "And, of course, the interest. Have you got a payment coming."

He finds himself grinning at the phone. "I'll change the sheets."

"Hardly seems worth it." Rose lowers her voice again. "We'll probably have to throw them away when we're done."