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."
43
Arthit says, "Give me the phone."
Rafferty hands it over with gratitude. Clarissa has kept her promise to call to say good-bye, and he has been unable to think of a single thing to tell her.
"I need to talk to you about your uncle," Arthit says after identifying himself. He does not look at Rafferty. He is speaking his best English, British-clipped and stiff as a pig's bristle. He wears a polo shirt that Claus Ulrich's catalog would probably call "color-free" and a new pair of plaid trousers, bright enough to light a ballroom.
Rafferty can hear a question on Clarissa's end, and Arthit says, "He was working for us. He was a very valuable asset."
Privately Rafferty thinks Arthit has been reading too much John le Carre, but he leans back on the slashed couch and keeps his opinion to himself. An hour with a household cleanser that stank of ammonia has deleted the smear of eggs from the wall, and a throw rug covers the wet spot from which he'd scrubbed Madame Wing's blood. He'd gotten up from the mutilated bed around four in the morning, the third time he'd dreamed about killing her, and moved the rug from the kitchen.
That leaves only the rest of the apartment to clean up. Sitting uselessly on the floor, he begins to gather the couch's stuffing.
"As you probably know, the commercial abuse of women in Asia is a serious problem, a failure of international policy. Cultural issues enter into it as well, the relative value to Asian society of men and women." Arthit's eyes are closed. He seems intentionally to be choosing the driest language available without actually resorting to footnotes, but Rafferty gives it a second thought and decides it's probably brilliant. Anything more personal would not be half so convincing.
"So for us to have someone who was European, or at least Australian, who was mobile, who could cross borders…" He waits again, as Clarissa talks. Rafferty can't make out the words, but her voice is pitched high.
"Of course," Arthit says. "He was invaluable. Once he'd established his cover, buying all that awful pornography, he could position himself as a serious customer. He could gain their trust, something none of us could have hoped to do.
"We made arrests," Arthit says. He is sitting sideways on the ravaged sofa, gazing at the spot above it where the egg smear used to be. "I can say without hesitation that one Chinese gang has been put completely out of business, at least indirectly because of your Uncle Claus." This is not only a clincher, Rafferty thinks; it has the added merit of being true. In a way.
"Yes, my dear," Arthit says, his eyes flicking to Rafferty. "He was a hero, of sorts. And what happened to him-well, it probably didn't happen in Thailand. We think he was most likely in Laos when they got to him. We may never know exactly."