The Fourth Watcher

19

The bar is fashionably dim. The same authority that decrees that casinos should be bright apparently mandates that bars should be dim. This one is dim enough that the street out

side, visible through the open door, is a source of light even at a few minutes before midnight.

“Walk back the cat,” Arthit says. He seems to be talking to his reflection, partially visible behind the row of bottles, most of which, in defiance of their fancy labels, contain cheap generic whiskey.

Rafferty has switched to club soda, much to the amusement of the female bartender. “That’s a striking image,” he says. “What the hell does it mean?”

Arthit puts down his second glass of so-called Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks. Like many Asians, he lacks an enzyme that metabolizes alcohol, and his face is a shade of crimson that would fascinate a cardiologist. “You obviously don’t read much espionage fiction.”

“I don’t read much of anything that was written after 1900. If you want to be dazzled, ask me about Anthony Trollope.”

“I always loved that name.” Arthit raps his wedding ring on the edge of his glass. Rafferty wonders if he is checking to make sure he can still hear. “ ‘Walking back the cat’ is a technique for unraveling an operation.” He lifts the glass and drinks. “First, of course, you have to assume it’s an operation.”

Rafferty glances around. As far as he can determine through the gloom, the other six customers seem to be absorbed in their own conversations. “It’s certainly something,” he says. “Even in counterfeit money, thirty thousand bucks is a lot of simoleons.”

“ ‘Simoleons’? Anthony Trollope used the term ‘simoleons’?”

“Not often,” Rafferty concedes.

“Here’s how many simoleons it actually is,” Arthit says. “Let’s say you’re a customer of whoever is making these things-”

“The North Koreans, Arnold Prettyman says.”

“Arnold? You’re talking to Arnold again? It’s a good thing you’re not on parole.”

“One takes information where one can get it.”

“Well, Arnold’s right. So. Let’s say you want to get your hands on some of these things. You can buy a North Korean hundred-dollar bill-in bulk, of course-for anywhere from sixty to seventy-five dollars, depending on market forces.”

“For example.”

Arthit tilts his head to the left. “How badly the North Koreans need cash. How much trouble they’re having getting the things into circulation. Fluctuations in the price of plutonium. How low Kim Jong Il’s cognac reserves are.” He raps the glass again, and this time the bartender looks over at him. Arthit raises a finger and points it, pistol style, at Rafferty’s soda glass, which contains nothing but a straw and a slice of lime. “So figure it out. Take a middle value, say seventy dollars to the hundred. Seven hundred to the thousand.”

“Jiminy,” Rafferty says. “Twenty-two thousand dollars.”

“Very impressive. Somebody spent twenty-two thousand dollars, or passed up on the opportunity to make twenty-two thousand dollars, to put that bag in Peachy’s drawer.”

“I see the distinction.”

“That’s a substantial investment. So to walk back the cat, you ask yourself a few questions. Who would be willing to make that investment?

Why? Why now? Why Peachy? Why an obscure domestic-service agency in a crappy corner of Pratunam?”

“Not so crappy.” Rafferty’s new glass of soda arrives, floating in on a big smile from the bartender, and he sips it and feels his tongue try to roll itself up. It’s tonic water. He starts to send it back and thinks, What the hell. Try something new. He returns the smile and takes another swallow. It tastes like malaria medicine.

“You know what I mean,” Arthit says. “If you’re going to set off a bomb, why do it there?”

“You’re smart when you’re drunk.”

“This isn’t drunk. This is mellow. Drunk is when I fall sideways off the stool.”

“Let’s arrange a signal, so I can get out of the way.”

“Who and why,” Arthit says. “Work from what we know and focus on who and why.”

“If we’re going to walk back the cat,” Rafferty says, “we have to start with yesterday, when those maids took the bad bills to the bank. Actually, we have to go back further, to when Peachy got the stuff in the first place.”

Arthit says, “Bingo.”

“Right,” Rafferty says. His mind is working so fast he doesn’t even taste the tonic as he swallows it. “We’ve said from the beginning that this would be all over as soon as Elson goes to the bank where Peachy got the money.”

“And that would be?” Arthit asks.

“On Monday.”

“Coincidence?” Arthit asks, and then lowers his voice and says dramatically, “I don’t think so.”

“So the why,” Rafferty says, “is to keep Elson from backtracking to the bank.”

“Sure. All this fake money, right there in the desk. Even if she did go to the bank, so what? The bills she gave to the maids came out of the bag.”

“That leaves the who,” Rafferty says. “Or, maybe more important, it leaves the how.”

“What how? Some master keys or a good set of picks, a paper bag full of money, an open desk drawer.”

“How the who knew to put it there.”

Arthit swivels his stool back and forth for a moment. “That how,” he says. He picks up his glass and puts it down again. “This line of speculation leads to some very uncomfortable territory.”

“The wood of the wolves,” Rafferty says. Then he says, “But still. Wherever the cat goes.”

Arthit has discovered that his stool squeaks when he turns more than six or seven inches to the left, and he plays with it for a moment, to Rafferty’s annoyance. Satisfied with the amount of noise he has made, he comes back to face the bar. “There were four people in your apartment. Elson, my two colleagues, and the girl- What’s her name?”

“Fon.”

“Right, Fon. And Fon’s been in jail ever since, so I suppose we can cross her off the list.” He takes an ambitious pull off the amber whatever-it-is in his glass and says, “And it doesn’t matter whether the someone put the money there himself or had someone else do it.”

“Not in the least.”

“Of course,” Arthit says carefully, “there’s always the possibility that Peachy put it there herself.”

“No,” Rafferty says. “There isn’t.”

“Let’s just follow it for a second. She hands out the bad bills, right?”

“Right. So?”

“And the girls get caught. She’s stuck with the story about the bank, and she knows it won’t hold up, so she grabs her bag of pretty paper from home or wherever she keeps it and shows up at your place, all distraught. ‘Look what I found,’ she says. And here we are, thinking about other people.”

“Never in a million years.”

Arthit wipes condensation from his glass with his index finger and dries it on his pants. “She’s had some problems, did you know that?”

“They’re hard to miss. She’s got pretensions to gentility, a bad marriage, a business that was going on the rocks.”

“She’s a gambler, Poke. She lost a small fortune playing the horses. It almost cost her-and her husband-everything. She was into the loan sharks for more than I make in a year.” He looks down at the wet smear on his trousers. “In fact, it cost her Prem, her husband.”

“He left her,” Rafferty says. “She told Rose about it.”

“Whatever she told Rose,” Arthit says, “it wasn’t true. Prem killed himself.”

Rafferty buries his face in his hands. “Oh, Jesus. Poor Peachy.”

“I could have kicked myself when I asked about her family. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“And you know about her husband how?”

“I checked,” Arthit says. “When Rose went into business with her, I did a little background research.”

“I see.” Rafferty looks down at his tonic water, focusing on the lonely little slice of lime, and Peachy’s face, hidden beneath its mask of makeup, floats into view. He flags the bartender. “This is tonic,” he says. “Could you please dump some gin into it?”

“If you really thought it was Peachy,” Rafferty says, “you wouldn’t be here.”

They have moved to a booth, mostly because Rafferty couldn’t stand hearing Arthit’s stool squeak one more time.

“I wouldn’t?” Arthit is drunk enough to be leaning forward on both elbows. Rafferty has forcibly switched him to soda, then tasted it to make sure nothing has been slipped into it while he wasn’t looking.

“What you kept saying at the apartment. ‘I shouldn’t be here.’ You must have said it half a dozen times.”

Arthit tastes his soda and gives it an Easter Island grimace. “I never claimed to be interesting.”

“You’re here because you don’t trust those cops.” He watches his friend’s face. “Or Elson.”

Arthit looks around the bar as if he hopes there will be somebody else there to talk to. Then he says, “Peachy’s too hapless. Too distracted by her life. She wouldn’t have the faintest idea where to get that paper. Also, the business is finally beginning to pay off. This would not be a good time for her to embark on a life of crime.”

“Then what was all that stuff-”

“It’s a case,” Arthit says, baring his upper teeth. “It’s a pretty convincing case, if you don’t know Peachy. It’s the case I think they’re going to try to make on Monday.”

“Ah,” Rafferty says.

“And there’s no way it’s not going to splash onto Rose.”

A little chill of pure dread runs through Rafferty’s chest and is immediately replaced by fury. “I’m going to see that it doesn’t.”

“So,” Arthit says, rubbing his eyes. “It’s Elson or the two cops, or someone they talked to.”

“Too many. We’ve only got until Monday.” Rafferty looks over at Arthit, red-faced and sweating opposite him. “Thanks for not leaving.”

“There, there,” Arthit says. “Let’s not get emotional.”

“But if this backfires, it could be serious for you.”

“No. If this backfires, it’ll be fatal.” He slides the glass of soda toward the center of the table. “Could I replace this with something that contains an active ingredient?”

“It’s your hangover.” Rafferty flags the bartender. “Black Label?”

“Black seems appropriate,” Arthit says.

“One more Black for my unwise friend,” Rafferty says. Then, to Arthit, he says, “Go away. Finish your drink and distance yourself. You weren’t at my apartment, we didn’t go to any bars. I haven’t seen you since this afternoon.”

Arthit is watching the bartender make his drink. Spotting him in the mirror, she adds an extra slug. “And walk away from all this fun?”

“You have to decide,” Rafferty says, “whether you want to hear what I’m about to say.”

“If I wanted to go deaf, I would have done it earlier.”

“Okay. We can’t figure out the who by Monday, but whoever they are, I think I can fuck up their plan pretty thoroughly.”

“Do tell.” The drink arrives, and Arthit looks like he wants to kiss it.

Rafferty tells him.

“My, my,” Arthit says. “That’s genuinely devious. And you think you can do it by Sunday night?”

Rafferty shrugs with an indifference he doesn’t feel. “I have to.”

“Is all this running around tomorrow going to give you time to go on an errand with me?”

“Oh, sure. My time is your time. What did you have in mind?”

“I thought we might crack open Agent Elson’s shell. Just a little. Sort of give us an idea of what’s inside it.”

“How?” Rafferty’s cell phone rings, and he says, “Hold that thought,” and answers it.

“Poke?” It is Prettyman’s voice, and it sounds strained to the point of strangulation. “Get your ass over here. Right now.”