"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.