The Fear Artist

21

Daeng has been dragged into these rooms twice since the night he almost went off the roof at the hotel near Khao San. The same questions, over and over: How had Rafferty gotten away without a bullet in him? Was he armed? If Rafferty took the fire escape, why hadn’t Daeng chased him? Why hadn’t he radioed the men in the street to tell them Rafferty was coming?

Had Rafferty bribed him? How much? Where was the money? Was someone else there, someone who helped Rafferty? If Rafferty got away from Daeng, how come he, Daeng, was uninjured? How could he just have been standing on the roof with his gun in his hand when the other officers arrived?

Was he working with Rafferty? Where is Rafferty now? What wasn’t he telling them?

What wasn’t he telling them?

But tonight was different.

They’d been watching him somehow, actually looking into his house. At the precise moment he sat down to dinner with his wife and their two children, the men had banged on the door with boots and fists as though they’d been waiting for the signal. There were six of them. They hammered hard enough to splinter it around the top hinge. He’d told the family to stay put and gone to open the door. His feet had been swept out from under him, and then he’d been manhandled onto his stomach as plastic restraints were cinched over his wrists and his children stood screaming in terror.

When they pulled him up, they’d wrenched his shoulder sockets and he’d cried out. His wife had run at the men, trying to help Daeng, and one of them had shoved her hard enough to put her on the carpet. He’d been dragged downstairs, thrown headfirst into the back of a wagon, and hauled down here, his questions unanswered, then slammed into a chair. Two of the men had stood behind him. Waiting for something.

That had been four hours ago. Since then no one has spoken. Two hours or so after his arrival, the two men behind him left the room in unison and were replaced by two others.

Daeng’s hands are completely numb. He’s certain they’re swollen to double their usual size. He can feel the pulses slamming in his wrists, trying to pump blood in and out, the veins crimped by the tight plastic cuffs. And his nose has been itching for hours. He’s never realized what agony it can be not to be able to scratch his nose.

He has to pee so badly he’s got a cramp. He crossed his legs against it, and one of the guards reached down and pushed the upper leg to the floor.

He’s damp with fear.

The door opens, and a short farang in a bright, terrible old shirt comes in. Someone outside opened the door for him, because he has a paper cup in each hand, and Daeng smells coffee.

In no hurry at all, he plants one haunch on the edge of the table. He looks down at Daeng.

Daeng says, “Hello.”

The red-haired man says, in Thai, “Coffee or tea?”

Daeng says, “Tea, please.”

“Fine,” the red-haired man says. “Catch.” And he throws the contents of one of the cups in Daeng’s face.

It’s scalding. Daeng’s legs straighten convulsively, the chair almost going over behind him, and the red-haired man says, “Take the coffee, too,” and hurls that at him, cup and all. One of the guards yelps in pain. While Daeng is still gasping, his eyes squeezed shut, the red-haired man says, “Get him up.”

Daeng is yanked to his feet. The red-haired man says, “Spread him out.” Holding him under the arms, the guards kick his feet far apart. He hears a grunt of effort from the red-haired man, and his testicles explode.

“Drop him.” The guards let go and step aside as Daeng crumples to the concrete floor and vomits and urinates at the same time. A kick to his cheekbone knocks his head aside. He lies there, choking and-to his shame-weeping.

The red-haired man says, “Hello.”

“Where are we going?” Ming Li calls from behind him. “Shouldn’t we be getting a hotel?”

“I have a hotel. We’re probably not going anywhere. I just need to check up on someone. This has nothing to do with anything.”

“Well, as long as it’s important.”

The women on the sidewalk have taken refuge in the doorways, and they smile at Poke. Ming Li catches up and grabs his arm. The women’s eyes glaze over, and they look back upstream, scanning the oncoming faces for a possible short-time.

“Is he any good?” she asks. “Vladimir?”

“According to a former spy named Arnold Prettyman, he was the best, back in the seventies.”

“Where’s Prettyman?”

“He got killed. When you were here last, actually.” He doesn’t say what he’s thinking, which is, Collateral damage from your father’s impulsiveness.

“If he’s dead, maybe he wasn’t the best judge.”

“Vladimir is what I’ve got. It’s hard to recruit a team when the other side is a steamroller.”

“When are you going to-”

“Whatever it is, I’ll do it tomorrow.” He stops at the corner of Soi 7. “Go get a hotel. Go back to the-” He motions down the street.

“The Alpine Suites. But why don’t you come with me?”

He counts the reasons impatiently, on his fingers. “I have a hotel, my stuff is in the room, it’s too much of a dump for you, and I have something to do.”

“Then I have something to do, too.”

He says, “No.”

People are bustling past them: men coming alone into the soi from Sukhumvit and men going out with young women.

“Oh,” Ming Li says, watching the crowd flow by. “I see.”

“No. No, you don’t see. Okay, don’t look at me like that. This is an attempt at an errand of mercy, and it’ll probably be a bust.”

“Right,” she says. “Well, you go earn your gold star, and I’ll-”

“Oh, come on,” he says, and sets off down the soi.

Despite the rain there are a lot of people. It’s after midnight by his watch, and the Beer Garden is popping at the seams. Groups of women go in beneath shared umbrellas, arms linked or holding hands with one another, and come out hanging on the darling of the hour. Rafferty and Ming Li take folding chairs across a sticky plastic table in an open-air restaurant on the opposite side of the soi. This is the second time Rafferty has sat here watching for Pim. The first time, eight or ten months ago, he’d met her only moments earlier, and she had bandaged a bad cut on his arm while he wrapped her sprained ankle. They hadn’t so much met as collided. He orders another beer for himself and a Coke for his sister, and for the first time since he caught sight of her that afternoon, Ming Li yawns.

“Jet lag?”

“Nah.” She blinks the tears away. “I just didn’t sleep on the plane.” She brushes at her chin with her fingertips and then points at his. “Mirror reflection,” she says. “Your makeup is streaking.”

“I know. It does that in this weather. I don’t worry about it so much at night.”

“Oh,” she says, and then she sits upright as though her chair has shocked her. “Ohhh. Mr. Delacroix, on the passport? He not wearing, I mean, he doesn’t look like … I don’t know, Gunga Din, or whoever you think you are now.”

“It’s okay. The sketch they’ve got out now looks like this, so I’ve been thinking about getting rid of Gunga anyway. Tomorrow I’ll look like me again.”

“It’s not very convincing.”

“It’s not supposed to be. It’s just to keep the moving eye moving, so to speak. You looked past me, if you’ll recall.”

“I guess I did.” She yawns again. “How’s the errand coming?”

“Haven’t seen her. Let’s give it ten minutes, and we’ll pack it in.”

“Then use the time. Tell me what I don’t know: Phoenix and Lala, and-”

“Yala. Okay. Look at me. I want to see if your eyes close.”

“I’ll stay awake. You watch your awful little street.”

“Before I start,” he says, “I want to tell you that it’s great to have you here.”

“You’re kidding.” She breaks into an enormous grin. Then she punches him on the arm. “Told you.”

“Okay now, listen, and you’ll know why I’m only going to let you help me so much.” He fills her in on Murphy’s background-at least according to Vladimir-and the kinds of things he did under Phoenix. He’s describing what happened in the laundry when she holds up a hand.

“The little thing cut into the ticket?” she says. “It was there for her to feel it, wasn’t it?”

“I think so.”

“That’s really sad. He carried it, whoever he was, figuring he might get killed. And if he was, that little hole would tell the story to someone he cared about, someone blind. Sooner or later someone would take it to the shop, but only she would know what it meant.”

“We need to talk to them tomorrow. Both of us.”

“It’s enough to break your heart,” she says. She sips at her Coke and then rests her forehead on her fingertips. Looking at the table, she says, “Dad had a system for me, so I’d know if he got killed. Back in China. He carried a postcard with an address and a stamp and a written message. All ready to go, but not mailed. He figured if he got … you know …”

“He didn’t,” Rafferty says.

“But if he had, I’m saying, he’d designed a way to get word to me. His daughter.” She exhales heavily and looks back to him. “So who are they to him?”

“I’m guessing, but think the blind woman is his sister-in-law. I think Helen Eckersley was his wife and the blind woman’s sister.”

“Why? Maybe the blind woman was his wife.”

“Maybe. But what he said to me, the only thing he wanted to say, was ‘Helen Eckersley’ and ‘Cheyenne,’ and both women looked stunned when I said the name Helen while I was talking to them. And Helen had an accent, like her sister’s.”

Ming Li leans forward and rests her forearms on the table, then feels the stickiness and purses her mouth in distaste. She unwraps the napkin that her Coke has been sweating into and uses it to scrub at her arms. “What are your big questions?”

“Okay.” He takes a pull on the beer and lets his eyes rove the street while he thinks. “Helen Eckersley was killed in America four days before the dead man bumped into me. That’s fourteen days ago. Why, and what’s it got to do with what’s happening here? Second, why was the dead American in that crowd of protesters-or, to look at it from another angle, how did Murphy and Shen know he’d be there? They had troops on hand, cops with barricades to block traffic, a sniper-everything. No way someone spotted him in the crowd and they put all that together on the fly. That was a setup. Probably the only accident was that I was on that street.”

“How could they set that up?” Ming Li says.

“That’s why I’m confused. It seems unlikely that they created a whole demonstration somehow and then sent him an invitation. And one other question, just something that’s been bothering me. Let’s assume that it was a setup, that that’s the reason everybody was there. The whole point was to catch, or take out, the guy who died in my arms. That’s information you’d want to control. That’s something they’d want to keep secret.”

She’s unaware she’s put her arm back onto the table. “Yeah?”

“So what was a TV news crew doing there? This is Bangkok. They couldn’t have gotten there in time any more than the cops with the barricades could. And the very first thing Shen’s guys did-before they even talked to me-was try to get the tape. Took off after the cameraman like their lives depended on catching him. That crew was not wanted. So what were they doing there?”

Ming Li says slowly, “Maybe somebody isn’t completely on the team.”

Rafferty says, “From your lips to God’s ears. And maybe it’s who I think it might be.”

“You’re not asking the questions I’d be asking. Who was the man they killed, for one.”

“I know who he was. I mean, I don’t know his name, but I know, or at least I’m pretty sure, that he was a grunt in Vietnam when Murphy was there. Something happened there that was completely off the charts, even by the standards of the Phoenix Program. Something that threatens Murphy and his operation here.”

“And here’s a little question,” Ming Li says. “Why don’t they have a good picture of you?”

“Yeah.” Rafferty goes back to surveying the soi. “I’ve been asking myself the same-”

His eye is drawn to a bright patch of color: A handsome Thai man in his early thirties comes up the street, holding an umbrella to shield several hundred dollars’ worth of clothing-white slacks and a peach-colored shirt under a short black leather jacket. With him, ignoring the umbrella, hanging on to his arm, and talking a hundred miles an hour, is Pim.

He sits forward, and Ming Li follows his gaze. “Her?” she says. Then, before he can answer, she says, “Boy, look at her. She’s flying.”

“Is she?” Rafferty tries to see her through Ming Li’s eyes. Pim’s free arm is making short, meaningless gestures, like a charade of stuttering. The half of her that’s not under the umbrella is wet enough to shine. Her steps are so approximate she’s almost falling over her feet. She’s back in sidewalk-tart clothes-tight, glittering shorts, an off-the-shoulder T-shirt with a big red lipstick mark on it, the ghost of a giant’s kiss. Her hair has been frizzed out in all directions and sprayed, and it sparkles.

“Stay here,” he says, and gets up and goes down the steps to the soi, heading into the middle of the street to intersect them. He can hear Pim’s voice now, high and slightly shaky, broken by an occasional burst of laughter. She’s not just flying. She’s pasted.

He says, “Pim.”

The Thai man stops, but Pim takes another step and stumbles, and he tugs on her arm. She squints at Rafferty and starts to smile, but the expression dies on her face, and she takes a step back.

Once again the Thai man restrains her.

Rafferty wipes water off his face and says, “Pim,” again.

“Not Pim,” says the Thai man. “Name now is Angel.”

“I’m talking to her, not you.”

Pim pulls at the Thai man’s arm, shifting from foot to foot in her eagerness to leave. The man yanks her arm sharply, and she stands still, looking down at the street, heedless of the rain.

“You want her?” the Thai man says.

Rafferty says to him, “Go away.”

The Thai man steps to the side and gives Pim a little push. “Go in, Angel,” he says in Thai, “and I’ll see you back at the room after three. Not before.”

Pim makes a wide circuit around Rafferty, eyes down, and hurries into the Beer Garden.

“You give her the pipe?” Rafferty asks, also in Thai.

“We share. She likes it more than I do.”

Rafferty turns to follow her in, but the man says, “She won’t go with you. Not unless I tell her to. And if you go in there and make a problem, guess who will get beat up.”

Rafferty stops, feeling Ming Li’s gaze from across the street.

“But if you want to talk to her,” the man says, “pay me forty dollars for a short time. I’ll go get her for you. Talk as much as you want for an hour. Forty dollars.”

“How about I pay you fifty and just break your nose?”

“Go back home,” the Thai man says. “Where you understand how things work.”

Rafferty stands there looking at the entrance to the bar. He mentally runs two or three chains of events and can’t find one where he’d have the time to get involved and stay involved.

He’s about to turn and go when the man says scornfully, “Big talk.”

Rafferty turns and nods at him. So furious it feels as though the road is rippling beneath his feet, he takes a few steps toward the side of the street where Ming Li is waiting-standing now-and as he passes the handsome Thai man, he folds his right arm, brings it as far across his chest as he can, as though he’s scratching his left shoulder, sets his feet, and swings the point of his elbow into the man’s throat. He scores a direct hit on the larynx. The man makes an agonized rasping sound and goes down on his back, both hands to his throat. He lies there coughing and hacking, rolling from side to side in a puddle, knees drawn up, and Rafferty bends over him and says, “I’ll be back. If I see a bruise on her, if I see a Band-Aid on her finger, I’ll have you torn into small pieces and fed to soi dogs. I will find your mother and make her watch them eat you. Nod if you understand.”

He waits, and the man nods. Rafferty leans closer. “And keep her away from that pipe.”

He straightens and sees a ring of watching people, mostly men. One of the women from the Beer Garden, a familiar-looking one, gives him a covert thumbs-up.

“Something wrong with his throat,” Rafferty says. “Listen to him. It might be contagious.” He keeps walking as Ming Li comes down the steps and falls in beside him.

“If that’s mercy,” she says, “I can do without it.”

DAENG IS ON the floor again. He’s come to prefer the floor. When he’s there, at least he knows he’s not going to fall.

He’d never imagined he could hurt this much.

“Up,” says the farang-Murphy, his name is Murphy-and the two men yank him upright. They shove him back into the chair, and Daeng squints through his one open eye at Murphy.

“I’m not going to play with you anymore,” Murphy says. “Did you know Rafferty before that night?”

“No.” He’s answered this a dozen times.

“Did you arrange to be the first man on the roof?”

“Ask the others.”

Murphy goes to the little table, knocked crooked and spattered with blood now, and picks up the box cutter.

Daeng’s bowels loosen. His forearms are already scored with shallow, intensely painful cuts.

“Did you arrange to be the first man on the roof?” He wiggles the box cutter. “Yes or no.”

“No, no, no.”

“Did he tell you anything while you were up there with him?”

“No.”

“You didn’t talk about anything.”

“I told you. We fought, he hit me with the door, I stumbled. I was falling off the building, and he stopped me, he grabbed my belt, and-”

“And he saved your life, and you repaid him by letting him go.”

“Yes.”

Murphy holds the box cutter vertical, inches from Daeng’s face. He says, “Stick out your tongue.”

Daeng says, “Uhhhhh, uhhhhhhh,” and then he’s weeping again.

“This is the third time you’ve been brought in and questioned, but you’ve never told the story about him saving you before, have you?” Murphy makes a quick movement and nicks the end of Daeng’s nose.

Daeng is sobbing too hard to answer.

“So you’ve had a lot of time to think this up. Maybe you and Rafferty worked it out together. How many times have you talked to him since that night?”

“Ne-ne-never, never.”

“I told you to stick out your tongue.”

A huge shudder racks Daeng, but he puts out his tongue.

“You know how much it hurts when you bite your tongue?” Murphy says. His voice is calm, even gentle, like an adult explaining something to a child. “Just full of nerve endings, the tongue is. Imagine what it would feel like for me to start at the tip and saw back an inch or so. Give you a forked tongue.”

One of the guards makes a choking sound.

Murphy looks up at the man behind Daeng. He says, “Are you in the wrong room?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you think this piece of shit has told us everything he knows?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, what would you suggest? Tell me what to do to him. Come on, be creative.”

The guard clears his throat.

“Sorry? You said what? Pull his hair? Call him names?” Murphy nods. “Good idea. Do it.”

“Sir?”

“It’s kind of crude, but who knows? Ball up your fist and punch him in the face. And I want to see you put some back into it.”

Daeng pulls his tongue in and squeezes his eyes shut. He hears the guard come around the chair, hears the feet stop in front of him. The guard’s breathing sounds ragged.

“Well?” Murphy says. “You waiting for him to bloom or something?”

Daeng hears feet scuff the concrete, and his head explodes. The force of the blow takes him off the chair and onto the floor again. He curls himself up against kicks and hears the guard hissing with pain.

“Broke your knuckle,” Murphy says. “Poor baby. Get him into the chair again.”

For what feels like the hundredth time, Daeng is lifted into the chair, hearing the gasp from the guard with the broken knuckle. The entire world is a pillow of pain Daeng is sinking into. The cheekbone on which the guard broke his knuckle beats with a hot red pulse, and blood is trickling down the side of Daeng’s neck. The swelling from the cheekbone pushes against his one open eye.

“Cuff his ankles to the chair,” Murphy says. “We’re down to it.”

The guards drag his feet up against the chair legs. Daeng doesn’t even try to resist. He hopes they’ll kill him. His wife and children flash in front of him, and he silently says good-bye, hoping their spirits will hear. He feels the warmth of the tears running down his face.

“Look at me,” Murphy says.

Daeng opens his right eye as far as he can. Murphy has the box cutter in his hand again.

“This is it,” Murphy says. “You tell me right now whether there’s anything more we need to know about you and Rafferty. I want you to talk, and clearly. To give you some motivation, here’s what I’m going to do if I’m not satisfied: I’m going to cut off your lips. You,” he says to the guards. “Grab his lips. You take the top, you take the bottom. Pull them as far away from his teeth as you can.”

Daeng tastes salt and sweat on the men’s hands, and then his lips are almost torn from his face.

Murphy’s eyes are boring into him. “You know, if I do this, nothing will happen to me. No one will even speak sharply to me. Not a frown in the hallway. You, on the other hand, will terrify everyone who sees you, and you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to keep your teeth wet.”

He brings the box cutter closer. “Trying to pronounce the letters b and p,” he says. “And f.”

He stops. He’s still looking at Daeng, but his face has gone slack, and it feels to Daeng as though Murphy is seeing straight through him. Then the gray-blue eyes lift to a point just above Daeng’s head and wander slowly to the right. Murphy stands up straight and backs up until he bumps the table, and then he sits, the box cutter dangling from his hand. “Or w,” he says to no one. Or m.” He closes his eyes for a moment. Without opening them, he says to the guards, “I don’t want those lips to move at all, is that clear?”

Both guards say, “Yes, sir,” and pull even harder on Daeng’s lips.

Murphy gets up and comes back over. He leans down so he’s only inches from Daeng’s face and says, “I want you to say something for me. Okay?”

Daeng tries to answer, but all that comes out is a vowel.

“Exactly,” Murphy says. “Now, here’s what I want you to say. I want you to say ‘Helen.’ ”

Daeng says, quite clearly, “Helena.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Murphy says. He bows his head and closes his eyes. Without looking up he says, “Now say ‘Cheyenne.’ ”

Daeng begins to speak, but Murphy says, over him, “ ‘Eckersley,’ say ‘Eckersley.’ ”

It’s a difficult word because it’s nothing Daeng has heard before, but he says, “Eckersley.”

Murphy whirls and flips the table so it lands legs-up, the sound ear-popping in the small room, “Motherfucker. The worst-case scenario, in three-fucking-D. No, no. Wait.” He turns back to Daeng. “Say ‘Cheyenne.’ ”

Daeng begins the word, but Murphy’s not listening. He tosses the box cutter onto the floor, pulls out the cell phone in his pocket, and speed-dials a U.S. number. He glances over at Daeng and the guards and carries the phone into a corner, with his back to them. Daeng hears him release a quiet laugh, just a single, unamused syllable, and say, “Paul.”

Murphy listens for a second and then says, “Have you been in her house since you had your visit with her?” He turns, so Daeng is looking at his profile. Murphy’s eyes are closed. “Well, go in. Use her phone and download her voice mail. I want to know who’s called her. Especially from over here.” Impatience tightens his face. “Yes, yes, from Bangkok.… Of course Bangkok. Just do it.” Murphy punches at the phone with a stubby finger and winces as he looks at Daeng, as though just registering the injuries. “For Christ’s sake, let go of him. You,” he says to Daeng. “You’ll be fine in a week or two.” He picks up the box cutter and slides the blade back in. Then he goes to the door, moving like an old man. “Just fine.”

“What should we do with him?” asks the man with the swelling hand.

Murphy puts a hand on the doorknob and turns back to face them. “Daeng,” he says. “Means ‘red,’ right? Same nickname I had, back when I was a kid. Red.” He looks down at the floor. As the guard is about to speak again, he says, “Bury him in solitary. As deep as you can. The most solitary solitary you’ve got. A week at least, until I say he can go. He talks to nobody.”

He puts the phone into his pocket. “You’re lucky, Red,” he says. “You’ll get to kiss your wife again.”