The Fear Artist

6

Mrs. Pongsiri is partly made up for her night’s work in the bar she either runs or owns; her hair is pulled back and her face powdered ghost white, awaiting the application of a foundation of some kind. There’s a snowy little sifting of powder on the tip of her nose and on her red T-shirt, and a new scar, a fine reddish line, on the side of her slender neck. A little less than a year ago, she’d been hurt quite badly when she tried to prevent two knife-wielding men, each of whom was probably double her weight, from breaking up Rafferty and Rose’s apartment. Rafferty’s been waiting ever since for a change in attitude, a telltale wince that says she’s become wary of him, and he’s never caught a glimpse of it.

Working in a bar for a few decades is a toughening experience.

Of course Rafferty can use her phone, she says, she says, sorry to come to the door looking like a monster in the movies; you know where the phone is, please excuse me while I turn myself into someone not so scary. Have you heard any more about the flooding?

And would he like a glass of water?

Rafferty declines the water and waits until she’s gone back into the bathroom. Her apartment is pretty much a duplicate of his, although he has no idea what she’s done with the second bedroom-used it as a closet, probably, since she owns an enormous amount of evening wear. The decor is surprisingly unfrilly, open and coolly austere, not too many pieces of furniture to jam up the room. A couple of very good carpets, antique from the look of them, take the curse off the building’s generic wall-to-wall. A robed monk of gilded wood sits, hands raised palms together in worship, knees drawn up beside him, all alone on a table in the corner.

The sliding glass door to her balcony is ajar; she’s on the downwind side of the building, and rain has gathered in little pools on the balcony floor, but it’s not slanting sharply enough to get into the apartment. She’s got the rising river on her side, a thick gray-brown snake a mile or two away, but he can’t see anything out of the ordinary, not that he’d recognize anything short of the city’s being full of water.

“It’s your husband,” he says into the phone in Thai when Rose answers.

“I know,” she says. She’s also speaking Thai. “Who else would call me in the autumn of my life?”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d heard the way they talked about you at the Expat Bar last night.”

“Them,” she says. “They remember a much younger woman. No, you’ve frightened off all my admirers.”

“You bet I have.”

“And a good thing, too. Motherhood being what it is.” She sniffles. “I thought I was supposed to call you tomorrow.”

“That’s right. You were.”

“That’s so sweet. You couldn’t wait to hear my-”

“Actually, there’s a problem.”

“On your end, too? Good. It doesn’t seem fair that I’ve got Miaow all to myself.”

“Well, you’re going to have her longer.” She doesn’t reply, so he says, “What is it this time?”

“She’s become a vegan.”

“You mean, no meat?”

“Oh, it’s not that easy,” Rose says. “Nothing that’s ever heard of meat. Nothing that’s ever been in the room when the word ‘meat’ was spoken. Nothing that came in a package made of anything that moves faster than a tree. Did you know that shrimp raised in captivity don’t have enough swimming space?”

“Is she serious about it?”

“Loudly serious. My mother starts to look worried hours before dinner.”

“Well, take her to the temple and leave her there. They’re vegetarians.”

“She’s a girl, remember? And the monks are much too bloodthirsty for her. They’ve vegetarians, not vegans. They wear leather sandals.”

“Boy,” Rafferty says. “I’m glad she’s your problem, not mine.”

“You don’t really know a man until you marry him.”

Mrs. Pongsiri comes into the room, heading toward the kitchen, a towel fastened over her shoulders with a big rhinestone hair clip. She mimes tilting a glass to her lips, eyebrows raised, and he shakes his head.

“In fairness to Miaow,” Rose says, “I’d forgotten how boring it is here. The kids just stare at her with their mouths open and wipe their noses. Everybody’s nose is running. People’s houses leak, and it looks like the rice crop is ruined.”

“Well, I’m sorry about that, and we’ll send extra money to your parents if the crop fails. I’ll even mail you some Kleenex, but I need you to stay away from Bangkok and to keep her with you.”

“Oh?” She pauses and sniffles. “Me, too,” she says.

“You too, what?”

“Nose running. Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“I don’t really know what’s going on, so why don’t I tell you what’s happened instead?” And he does. He’s halfway through when she says, “Arthit’s got a girlfriend?”

“I don’t know,” he says, barely throttling his impatience. “How would I know? I’m a man.”

“You were there.”

“Okay, yeah, I think he does. I think they like each other.”

“And she knew Noi? Did you like her?”

“Listen, I know I’m being all insensitive and male in wanting to talk about my problems when-”

“You care about Arthit, too.”

“Well, of course I–Look, look. Here’s the deal. These people think I know something, whatever it is, and that I might pass it on to someone else. And they don’t really give a shit if they flatten a few bystanders. They can haul me in anytime they want-”

“How?”

“And they’ve got my gun.”

A pause on her end. “How did they-”

“I was just about to tell you. They broke into the apartment and took the gun.” The pause this time is so long that he says, “Hello?”

“I’m here. I can’t believe I’m asking this question, but who was shot with that gun?”

He’s been asking himself the same question from the moment the bag of coins hit the bed. “Madame Wing, but nobody’s going to find her if they haven’t already. Couple of Chu’s guys, same thing. But the point is, I have no right to have it in the first place.”

“It’s not a big crime.”

“Rose. This is a country that fired a prime minister because he made an omelet on television.”

“No they didn’t, they fired him for political-Okay, right, you’re right.”

“Plus, I’m under surveillance.”

“That’s why you’re not using your own phone. Whose number is this?”

“Mrs. Pongsiri’s. I want you to toss your phone and get a new one up there. When you’ve got it, hang on to it, and I’ll figure out how to get you my new number.”

“You can call my mother.”

“You’re not going to be at your mother’s. Do you remember where you went after Howard Horner? Don’t mention any names. You know the place I mean?”

“Oh, no,” she says. “Yes, I remember it. Somewhere else where everyone’s nose will be running. Why can’t we go to … I don’t know, someplace sunny?”

“Go to that village. Stay there until I get in touch with you.”

“I’ll go, but I don’t know if they’ll let us stay.”

“They did before.”

“I didn’t have a twelve- or thirteen-year-old vegan with me before.”

“They’ll love her.”

Rose says nothing.

“Pay them money,” Rafferty says.

“And where am I going to get money?”

“Right, good thinking. No ATMs. Call those people’s daughter on your new phone and tell her I’ll be in touch with her to get your number, then ask her to send a few thousand baht up to you.” The place he wants her to go to is the home of the parents of a woman nicknamed Fon. Soon after coming to Bangkok, Rose had taken refuge with Fon’s family when she had to hide from one of the psychopaths who batter their way through the bars every now and then.

Rose says, “I hate this.”

He doesn’t know what to say, so he says, “I’m sorry.”

“I should have married Walter.”

“Who’s Walter?”

“The little fat one with the rubbery lips who’s lost most of his hair. You’ve met him three times.”

“I don’t remember him.”

“That’s the point,” Rose says. “Nobody remembers Walter.”

“Oh, well,” Rafferty says, “if it’s safety you want …”

“I’ll call when everything is set.” Rose hangs up, and Rafferty stands there with the phone at his ear, feeling like he’s just stepped into thin air.

He puts the phone back on the table, and he’s still staring down at it when Mrs. Pongsiri comes back in. She’s got a glass of something dark in her hand, and she presses it upon him.

“Here,” she says in a tone of command. “You drink.” Her face is a masterpiece of the painter’s art. It doesn’t look natural, and it’s obviously not supposed to. What it says is skill. What it says is determination. The makeup tells a customer everything he could want to know about a bar owner: She’s attractive, meticulous, accomplished, in control. The women who work for her are going to laugh at a man’s jokes, and in the right places. “Coke,” she announces. “American always want Coke.”

Rafferty loathes Coke, but he needs something and he accepts it gratefully.

“Problem?” she says. She’s speaking English, as she almost always does with him.

“I think so.”

“Sometimes we think have problem but not have.”

“Maybe you’re right,” he says. He knocks back about half the Coke, which is room temperature, trying not to make a face.

She gives him a reassuring smile and starts to pad back into the bathroom but stops in midstep and holds up a hand, her face the blank mask of someone who’s trying to hear something faint. “You have friend?”

“Jesus,” he says. “I hope so.”

“I mean now? You have friend come your house now?”

“No,” Rafferty says with a sinking feeling.

“You listen,” she says.

He listens. She has better ears than he does, but after a couple of moments he hears male voices in the hall.

Mrs. Pongsiri pats the air in his direction with her upraised hand: Stay there. She goes to the door and slides aside a little metal disk at eye level and peeks through the opening. Then she turns to him, puts a finger to her lips, and waves him toward her, fingers curved down.

“Special,” she whispers, moving aside for him. “Super wide angle.”

The lens is practically a fish-eye. Off at the far left, he sees three of them in uniform, as curved as the letter C by the edge of the lens. One of them, wearing a sergeant’s chevron on his sleeve, is stooped slightly forward, unlocking the door of Rafferty’s apartment. The other two have their weapons unholstered, hanging at their sides.

Rafferty says, without even thinking about it, “Shit.”

“You move,” Mrs. Pongsiri says, practically shouldering him aside. He looks down at her midnight-black hair, seeing the gleam of silver at the part and catching the scent of her, a scent so heavy she’d probably retain it after a sandblasting. He endures a cold wave of guilt for what she went through for him once before, for the danger she might be in right now. She’s tiny, she’s old, she’s valiant, and she doesn’t deserve any of this.

“He go in,” she whispers. “This one.” She draws the sergeant’s chevron on her sleeve with her index finger. “Other two wait. One look in, one look at elevator. Both look stupid.”

Rafferty wants to see for himself, but when he puts a hand on Mrs. Pongsiri’s shoulder, she shrugs it off. “He come out now. Talking, talking, door still open. Stand around. Cops so lazy, all same-same. Want everything free, act like big deal, sleep standing up, take money, money, money. Okay,” she says. “He close door, they all stand around some more. They put gun away.” She looks up at him. “You have trouble.”

“Well,” Rafferty says, “yes.”

She gives him the dubious eye, the eye she’s probably trained on a thousand customers who might or might not be deadbeats. Then she shakes her head.

“They waiting for you, yes?”

“Afraid so.”

“Okay,” she says. She goes into the living room and glances at her reflection in the beveled mirror that hangs over the couch. Yanks at her hair so a few long strands hang untidily over her face and then uses the heel of her right palm to smear her eyebrow makeup on that side, just a little. When she turns back to him, she looks like a woman who drinks away much of her day.

“You stay,” she says, and goes into the kitchen.

“What do you mean, I stay?” He’s whispering so sharply he’s half afraid they can hear him. “What are you-”

“Cops,” she says. “I no like. I like you, I like Rose, I like Miaow. Cops no good.” She drops into an effortless squat and pulls open the cabinet doors beneath her sink. “Okay,” she says again, and it sounds like a mantra of commitment.

“Listen,” he says as she pulls out a blue plastic trash bag, about half full. “I can take care of this myself.”

“Yes? How?”

“I’m working on that, but you’re-”

“When I come back,” she says, closing the top of the bag with a knot a mariner would envy, “you tell me how you handle.” She hoists the bag to her shoulder, Santa Claus style, and stands.

Rafferty blocks the door. “No way. I am not hiding behind an … an, uhh …”

“Old?” Mrs. Pongsiri whispers with a sweet smile. “Old woman?”

“No. I mean yes, a woman, I’m not hiding behind a woman.”

“Why you marry such a big one, then?” She elbows him out of the way, and he moves, mostly because he can’t imagine getting into a pushing match with someone her size.

But he takes her arm before she reaches the door and says, “No. I’m serious. I don’t want you to go out there.”

“They still there?” she asks.

He goes to the peephole and looks out. “Yes,” he says, and the door hits him in the forehead.

Mrs. Pongsiri pushes it open, and he has no alternative but to move with it, to stay behind it and not to make it obvious that she’s in a fight with someone over whether she should go into the hall.

She leaves the door partway open, and Rafferty finds he can see down the hall, standing behind it and using the peephole. Mrs. Pongsiri takes wobbly little steps, shuffling in a way that adds years to her age. “Hello, hello,” she calls gaily in Thai as she trundles toward the uniformed men. “They do something wrong?”

“Who?” asks the man who’d gone into the apartment, the sergeant.

“Them,” she says, going toward the garbage chute next to the elevator. “The farang and his wife.”

“You know them?” the sergeant demands.

Mrs. Pongsiri turns and looks at the sergeant long enough to make him fidget. “They live here,” she says slowly, as though talking to someone who’s challenged. “I live there. The elevator is here. How could I not know them?”

“How well do you know them?”

“I know the wife to say hello, how are you. The little girl doesn’t talk to anybody, but she used to be sweet.”

“And the man?”

“Farang,” she says tartly. “I don’t like farang.”

“Why not?”

“Thailand,” she says. “Thailand is for Thais. We have too many farang.”

“You’ve been here all day?”

“I’m here every day,” Mrs. Pongsiri says. “I go out once in a while to pick up a little something.”

“Did you see them leave?”

“The wife and the daughter went together, two or three days ago. They went up north, Chiang Mai, I think.”

“And the man?”

“Why are you hurrying me? I’m going to tell you.” She blows some wispy hair away from her eyes and sways a bit, the picture of someone who’s had a couple too many. Then she leans comfortably against the wall and smiles at them.

“So tell me,” the sergeant says. “I haven’t got the whole day.”

“Come to my apartment,” she says, and Rafferty starts looking around for a place to hide. “You’re a handsome boy, we could have a drink and talk about it.”

“No,” the sergeant says. One of the men is laughing, and the sergeant starts to smile, too, but tucks it away before it can claim possession of his mouth. “It’s very nice of you, but I’m on duty. About the man-”

“Go ahead,” says the cop who laughed. “We’ll stay here.”

“The man who lives here,” the sergeant says, looking like he wants to wipe his forehead.

“He left about noon. I came up in the elevator-I’d been down at Foodland, getting some rice and some chilies. I go through a lot of chilies. And I got two new towels also, very nice, yellow but not one of those awful yellows, a soft yellow, like … like butter. And they-”

“The man,” the sergeant says through his teeth.

“And they were only forty baht,” Mrs. Pongsiri says very fast, getting it in before he can interrupt again. “And he came out of the apartment and helped me carry the bags even though he had to put down his suitcase-”

“There’s no suitcase missing,” the sergeant says. “We went through this place last night, and there was only one suitcase in it, and it’s still here.”

“It was new,” Mrs. Pongsiri says. “Still all shiny. A hard one, with wheels. It looked like the ones they sell at the Silom end of Patpong Two. But those are fakes, and this might have been-”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“Chiang Mai,” she said. “With them.”

“The … uh, the wife-”

“And daughter. Not a very pretty little girl, but smart as a whip. Do you have children?”

“No, I-”

“Of course not, you’re practically a child yourself. Are you sure you wouldn’t like some-”

The sergeant puts up both hands, palms out. “No, no. But thank you.”

“Four days,” she says. “He said he’d be back in four days. Said they’d all be back in four days.” She brushes her hands together and pushes off from the wall again, stumbling toward the sergeant, who backs against the door. “Whoops,” she says. “Well, bye-bye. I live right there,” she adds, pointing. “Where that open door is.”

Rafferty ducks into the kitchen as she swings the door closed. She goes straight to the mirror in the living room and begins to smooth her hair back, clucking at the state of her makeup. Her eyes find his in the mirror, and she begins to laugh.

Forty minutes later the cops are long gone, and Rafferty comes out of the elevator in the underground garage to find a silver Toyota waiting. The car’s rear door is already open, so he’s visible for just a couple of seconds. When he’s lying on the floor in the back, Mrs. Pongsiri climbs in and rests her high heels on his ribs.

“Careful with that,” he says.

“You not hide behind woman,” she says as the car jerks into motion, “but hide under woman, no problem.”

The driver laughs along with her.