“Do you mean that?”
“Look at me,” Pan says. He opens his desk drawer, pulls out a tube of lip balm, and applies it. “Look how handsome I am. Am I any better than they are?”
Rafferty thinks, No, and he’s heard enough. “We need to talk.” He moves his head a quarter of an inch in Dr. Ravi’s direction. “Alone.”
Pan’s glistening mouth contracts as though he’s about to whistle. Dr. Ravi sputters.
Pan says, in English, “Go.”
“Khun Pan,” Dr. Ravi says, “I don’t advise-”
“If I have to get up and push you out the door,” Pan says, “I’ll probably break your back.”
“Very well.” Rafferty can hear Dr. Ravi’s lips tighten around the words. Then the door closes.
Rafferty says, “I’m going to put my life in your hands.”
Pan is watching the door as though he’s trying to see through it. He seems to be listening, but not to Rafferty. After ten or fifteen seconds, he nods and says, “Why would you do that?”
“Because my wife thinks you’re a great man.”
“Women are bad judges of character.”
“Oh, turn it off. You’ve already outraged me. Give it a rest.”
Pan puts his fingertips to his temples and rubs circles, about the size of a quarter. “This is about why you don’t want the million baht.”
“Actually, the million baht confuses me.”
“Why? A million is a thousand thousands, right? What’s confusing?”
“I had a threatening call this morning, telling me not to write the book.”
The circles stop. “You did? Who-Oh, oh, I see. No, not me. I don’t do things that way.”
“You used to. Back in the old days.”
“Think about it,” Pan says. “I have someone threaten you this morning-what? Four, five hours ago?”
“Something like that.”
“And then I ask you to come here so I can offer you money. Without even waiting to see if you’ve been scared off. Does that make sense?”
“Then you have no idea who-”
“None. But I’ll think about it. So,” Pan says, leaning back in a relaxed position for the first time, “are you going to write the book or not? The million’s still on the table.”
“It’ll have to stay there. I had two conversations this morning, not one. In the second chat, my life and the lives of my wife and daughter were threatened if I don’t write the book.”
He jerks forward as though Rafferty had yanked a rope tied around his chest. “If you don’t-”
“And the book they want me to write is probably not the monument of your dreams.”
Pan settles back in the chair. The wet-looking eyes go from side to side for a second, as though Rafferty were moving, and then something ignites in them. He leans forward again, almost eagerly, and says, “Who?”
“I don’t know. But they’re serious.” He tells Pan about the snatch in front of Miaow’s school and what followed.
“Do you have the list?”
“Sure.” He hands it across the desk.
Pan scans it, and the color mounts in his face. “No,” he says. “Not the book I’d want.” His eyes come up from the page. “Do you know any of these people?”
“I recognize some of the names. Anyone would.”
“Spiders, the bunch of them.” Pan passes the side of a scarred hand across the page as though he could erase the names. “Bloated, greedy, venomous. They suck people dry and spit out the husks. Strip the land, poison the rivers, turn men into drunks and women into whores. Buy rice at low prices and sell it at high ones. Let people starve and count the money.” He fills his cheeks with air and releases it. Rafferty can smell the sourness of the previous evening’s cognac all the way across the desk.
Rafferty says, “You’re saying they’re pigs.”
“Not on their best days,” Pan says. “Give me a good pig any time.”
“When these people threaten my family, how seriously should I take it?”
“How seriously do you take breathing?” Pan squirms himself a bit lower in his chair. Then one foot, clad only in a sock, hits the top of the desk. He laces his fingers across his belly and regards his foot critically. “What you said last night,” he says, “about there being a great crime somewhere. That didn’t sound like you were planning to write a fan letter.”
“I was pissed off. I was surprised you took the bet.”
Pan drops his eyes to the center of Rafferty’s chest, and then, suddenly, he grins. “I’m really not a good drinker.”
“No, you’re not.”
“So, just to be clear, you want to get out of writing the book.”
“With a qualifier,” Rafferty says. “I have to get out of it alive.”
Pan waves a hand in the air, as though to clear smoke. “Be specific. Let’s say I’m disposed to help you. How would I do that?”
“To start, I want a list of everybody who will tell me the story you’d want the book to tell. That way, I can let them know you’re cooperating.”
Pan nods. “And you’ll look busy, if someone is watching.”
“Someone will be watching.”
“Yes, they will.” He looks over Rafferty’s shoulder and then raises his eyes to the ceiling. Then he closes them. After a moment he says, “I’m having an event here tonight. Malaria relief.”
“I heard. How many of the people on that list will be here?”
“A lot of them.”
Rafferty says, “Got an extra ticket?”
Pan opens his eyes, still looking at the ceiling, and says, “Your wife, the one who thinks I’m a great man. Is she from Isaan?”
“Yes.”
“Is she pretty?”
“I think it’s absolutely safe,” Rafferty replies, “to say she’s pretty.”
“Good.” Pan leans back and puts his other foot on the desk. His eyes close again. “You get two tickets.”
15
He leans against the carved Mesopotamian wall, his shoulders midway between a king’s sandaled feet. After the mausoleum chill of the house, the heat actually feels good. He settles his shoulders against the warm brick, reaches into the rear pocket of his jeans, and pulls out the yellow sheets containing the list he copied on the thirty-sixth floor.
The list Dr. Ravi gave him at Pan’s command is in his shirt pocket. He opens it, too, and spends three or four minutes going back and forth between them.
Not a single name appears on both lists.
He is pushing that around in his mind when the low growl of an engine brings his head up.
Idling at the curb six or seven feet from him is a carbon-black, dark-windowed SUV, expensively pimped out in customized chrome. The word LEXUS is inscribed on the door in silvery italics eighteen inches high. Deep blue lights blink beneath the chassis and bounce off the asphalt, in time to a throbbing bass line that makes the entire vehicle pulsate. The windows are heavily tinted. The behemoth just sits there, a sort of right-hand drive Death Star energized by techno music. It doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
A movement at the edge of his vision draws his gaze. In the turret beside the gate, the guard has picked up the phone. His eyes, like Rafferty’s, are on the SUV.
There is no one on the sidewalk. Except for the guard behind his bulletproof glass and whoever is in the SUV, there are, Rafferty realizes, no witnesses.
Not a comfortable way to look at it.
He could move, but there’s nowhere to go, just the wall with its frozen kings and hanging gardens, which he can neither climb nor melt into. A look at the guard’s anxious face makes it clear he’s not going to open any doors. Even if Rafferty turns and runs the long block to the corner, the SUV can keep up with him easily, and there’s no place to run to.
The SUV’s horn is tapped twice, like it’s clearing its throat for attention. A back window goes down five or six inches, and something long and shiny comes through the opening and points at Rafferty. It is the barrel of a rifle.
Rafferty can feel the precise spot in the center of his chest on which the rifle is trained, as though a stream of cold air were pouring through the muzzle of the gun. He can feel his knees loosen. He rests more of his weight against the wall just to stay upright. He feels his pulse bump against the band of his wristwatch.