A Nail Through the Heart

42

Toadface and Skeletor flank her wheelchair like a pair of mismatched tutelary figures guarding a throne. Madame Wing raises her chin.

"You stink," Madame Wing says.

"Yeah, but I can take a shower," Rafferty replies shakily. "What are your options?"

She perches in the chair, more batlike than ever, sharp knees drawn up to her chest. The inevitable blanket covers her legs, but her feet protrude from the bottom edge. She has prehensile feet-long, thin toes with narrow, yellowish nails that extend far enough to curl downward, long enough to break if she had to walk. They are the ugliest feet Rafferty has ever seen. It gives him a cold twinge of comfort that she has had to live with such hideous feet.

Skeletor-Nick-leaves her side to circle him, keeping his distance, and shuts the door. He positions himself with his back to it.

Rafferty leans against the wall, his joints too loose and his bones too heavy, his body too big and bulky to move. Pain radiates out from a dozen places where he was hit. "This isn't exactly what I had in mind," he says.

"Change of plans," says Toadface.

"So I see." Rafferty draws a deep breath and blows it out. "How you doing, you merciless old bitch?" he asks Madame Wing.

She knocks the insult away with a knot of knuckles. "Where is the man who took my money?"

"You'll never know." He can't tell the truth. He knows she can reach Chouk in jail, as easily as stretching out a hand and slapping him.

"Oh," she says comfortably, "I think I will."

"Yeah? What's the plan? You going to kiss me?"

She almost smiles. "We're going to wait," she says.

"For what?"

Madame Wing slips a hand beneath the blanket and comes out with a piece of paper. He can see the bright colors through the back of the sheet even before she turns it around to face him. It is one of Miaow's new drawings, a family group of four: Rafferty, Rose, Superman, and herself. It seems to him to have been months since she drew it. "Until the children come home," she says.

There is a hot pressure in Rafferty's chest that he recognizes as terror. "They won't come home," he says.

"Really." She is undisturbed. "And why not?"

"The boy's gone," he says. "Miaow won't leave school until I go get her."

"The school called," she says. "About three minutes ago, because you hadn't shown up. And one of these gentlemen told them to put her in a taxi and send her here. And they will. The Thais are not careful people. They put too much faith in the future."

"It's too late for you," he says.

"Is it?" There is not a trace of interest in her face.

"The pictures. They're already at the Bangkok Post. They'll be on the Internet by this time tomorrow."

"I'm sure they'll be popular." She drops Miaow's drawing to the floor. It lands right side up near the wheel of her chair, the bright, cheerful picture facing Rafferty. "The Post won't publish them. The laws of libel are almost the only laws the Thais enforce. What do they show? A young woman. She could be anyone."

"You underestimate your ugliness."

Her whole head snaps forward, quick as a cobra. "You have no idea what I've survived," she says. "Do you honestly think you can make an end of me? You, with your cheap apartment, your sad little life. I am as far beyond you as the stars."

"Those whom the gods would destroy," Rafferty says, "they first give weak dialogue."

She does not even pause. "You will disappear so completely that no one will even bother to look. Who would miss you? Especially since the child will be gone, too." She rests the terrible hands on her knees, a bundle of brown twigs, the nest of some predatory bird.

"You guys really on board for this?" Rafferty asks. "You going to hurt a kid?"

"If necessary," says Nick.

"And you," Rafferty says to Chut. "You have a daughter of your own."

Chut starts to reply, then stops. He looks away.

"She paying you a lot?"

Nick says, "A lot more than we could have gotten from selling her."

"The only person in the world who can identify me is the man you are hiding," Madame Wing says. "Tell me where he is, and we'll let the child live."

"I wouldn't shit on you if you needed the ballast."

"Be as brave as you like. Do you know how many thousand times I've been through this? It's always the same. I can predict every stage you'll go through. First you'll refuse to tell us anything. Then you'll lie. When the lies don't stop us, you'll tell us what we want to know. Then, at the last, you'll say anything-anything-to make us stop. You'll tell us where your mother is. You'll beg us to hurt the little girl instead of you. Do you think there were no brave men and women in Cambodia? There were thousands of them. Do you know how many of them refused to talk to me in the end? None of them. Not one."

"I know what 'none' means."

"Save yourself the pain," she says, settling back in the chair. "In the end it will be the same anyway, except that you will have suffered and the child will die. Where is he?"

"On an airplane."

Her eyes widen and narrow again. "A lie. I'm not going to bargain any further. I've given you all I'm going to give. A quick answer from you and we'll be gone before the child arrives. Once she comes through that door, she's dead, I promise you."

Rafferty turns to stare at Chut, who averts his eyes. "These guys haven't got the stones for it."

"It's remarkable," she says complacently, "how many people turn out to have the stones, as you say. There was no shortage of willing hands in Tuol Sleng. It's like heroism. You have no idea what people can do until they do it. One of my best helpers was a boy who cried at sad movies."

"He's on a plane," Rafferty says again. "On his way to Hong Kong."

A tightening of the skin over the bones of her face. "Using what for money?"

"Obviously, yours."

Madame Wing looks at the others. "Does anyone here believe that?"

"He's working for free?" Nick says. The thin lips twist. "I don't think so."

"Listen," Rafferty says. "He's gone. He can't hurt you now. Killing me is just going to complicate your life. The police-"

"The police?" She waves a twisted hand at Nick and Chut. "The police are already here. They've been taking care of me for years. The police are not a problem. The problem is that you're not taking this seriously enough. Nobody really believes they're going to be hurt. They think we'll stop at some point before it gets awful." She leans toward him, boring in on him with those light-gathering eyes. "But we don't." She turns to the skeletal Nick. "Remove his trousers."

Rafferty starts to move, but Nick raises his hand, and it comes up with the automatic in it. The man's eyes are unsteady, flickering toward Chut and away again, but the pistol does not waver. It points straight at Rafferty's belly. "Take them off," Nick says.

"You can't actually shoot me," Rafferty says to Madame Wing with more certainty than he feels. "You want information."

Nick snaps a round into the chamber.

"Of course he can shoot you," Madame Wing says, and then she says to Nick, "Aim at the knees."

"Wait," Rafferty says. "You guys-listen, I'll give you the deed to her house. It's worth a hundred times what she's paying you."

Chut looks at Nick and then at Madame Wing.

"It's a forgery," she says.

"Afraid not," Rafferty says. "I sent you the forgery."

He has the brief pleasure of seeing the rage flare in her eyes, but then she wills it away. "We'll get the deed, too, after you tell us what we want to know." She tucks the blanket over her feet. "And, just for that, we're not going to wait. We'll get started and let the child walk in on us. Surprise her." She reaches beneath the blanket again, and when she brings her hands up, they have a thin black zippered case in them. "Which airline?" she says, unzipping the case.

"I don't know."

"What flight number? What time did it leave Bangkok?" The case is open now. A row of straight razors gleams against the black leather, arranged precisely from large to small. "Get him moving," she says. "I want him on the couch." She pries a razor from the case with her knotted fingers and opens it. It has a curved back, and there are nicks in the sharp straight edge. "This one isn't as sharp as I'd like it-no, as you'd like it to be. Tell me the flight number, and I'll use a sharper one."

"I don't know the flight number."

"Assuming he's even on a plane, which I don't believe for a moment. The couch," she says to the man with the pistol in his hand. "Get his trousers down and get him on the couch."

Nick walks around behind Rafferty and punches him between the shoulder blades. Rafferty takes two steps toward the couch, the man following a step behind, and there's a sound at the front door.

The knob turns, the clicking noise audible to them all. The door begins to open.

Rafferty raises a heavy boot and brings it down on Nick's instep. The man gasps and takes a quick jump backward, and Rafferty drops to his knees, rolls with the momentum, and comes up with the automatic in his hand, swinging the barrel around toward Nick, who is backing up fast.

The door opens, and Rose comes in.

She stands there, blinking for a moment, and Chut moves behind her and closes the door. Suddenly there is a gun in Chut's hand, too. All Rafferty can hear is his own breathing.

"Put down the gun," Madame Wing says. "You can't kill all of us. Chut, if he doesn't drop the gun, shoot the woman."

Chut brings his gun around to Rose and licks his lips. "Sort of a standoff, isn't it?" he says.

"Actually," Rafferty says, "no." And he draws the deepest breath of his life, swivels, and shoots Madame Wing twice.

At first he thinks she is trying to get out of the room. He hears the metallic animal squeal of the wheels as the chair rolls back, and then she throws up a hand and the chair tips backward and goes down, partially folding sideways as it falls. The blanket flies into the air and settles, in what seems to Rafferty to be slow motion, over Madame Wing's face. She coughs, and her left foot kicks once and then collapses against the edge of the lopsided chair.

"You're the one who said it," Rafferty says to Rose. He has to swallow twice. "There are people who should die."

Nick and Chut stand with their guns dangling at their sides, pointed at the floor, looking like men who have lost a winning lottery ticket. Rose comes slowly the rest of the way into the room, ignoring the two of them completely. Avoiding Rafferty's eyes, she stands over Madame Wing until it is clear she is not going to move. "I'm smoking a cigarette," she says to no one in particular, and then, very suddenly, she sits on the floor. She turns her head so she is not facing Madame Wing and begins to ransack her purse.

Chut has opened his mouth wide to clear the sound of the shots in the small room.

"You've still got your buyer," Rafferty says. He sits on the couch, which seems to be a very long way down, so far he thinks for an instant he has missed it. His body folds forward until his hands touch the carpet. He lets the gun fall from his fingers. He hears a match strike, and Rose's smoke tickles his nostrils. "There really is a buyer, isn't there?"

"Yes," says Chut, looking regretfully down at Madame Wing.

Rafferty leans back against the couch and closes his eyes. The room tilts, wheels around him, and rights itself. "Then get her out of here and sell her," he says. "And if she's gone before my daughter gets home, I'll give you the deed to her house."