Porthip looks past Rafferty and lets his eyes settle on Arthit. “He’s not the same man. Before, he had…he had honor.”
“What does that mean?” Rafferty asks.
“You’re doing so well,” Porthip says. “I’d hate…hate to deprive you of the satisfaction.”
“You backed him. You put him into businesses he never could have gotten into on his own.”
“At first,” Porthip says. “For a while.”
“And then you sold the factory to him.”
“No,” Porthip says. “You’re missing it.”
“Missing what?”
“Snakeskin. Snakeskin sold the factory to Pan.”
Rafferty says, “I just said that.”
Porthip shakes his head. “You said I sold it to him.”
From behind Rafferty, Arthit says, “It’s a corporation, Poke. It’s not an individual. It remains Snakeskin no matter who owns it.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Rafferty says. “You sold the company.”
Kosit closes his eyes and nods.
“To whom?”
Porthip’s lids open, and he looks at Rafferty out of the corners of his eyes. He lifts his hand toward the morphine-delivery unit and caresses the plunger with his fingertips, then lets the hand drop. “You don’t know?” he asks. “You haven’t figured it out?”
Rafferty tilts his head back and closes his eyes and lets the realization wash over him. When he opens them again, he finds Porthip looking at him with some of the old energy.
“Ton,” Rafferty says. “You sold it to Ton. And Ton gave the factory to Pan.”
“See?” Porthip says. “You’re not hopeless after all.”
46
They haven’t even gotten into the hospital’s parking lot when Rafferty’s phone rings.
“Wichat came out of his office,” says a child’s voice. “With three big guys.”
“Who is this?”
“Nit,” says the child. “I’m the girl who runs fast.”
“Good work, Nit. Stay away from him. Be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
“Has he met anybody?”
“No, but he went to your apartment building, where we were this morning. He’s in there now.”
Rafferty’s heart sinks. He’d been pretty sure it would happen, but he hadn’t wanted to believe it. He puts out a hand to stop Arthit and Kosit. “Where are you?”
“In front of the building. Across the street.”
“You know the garage door, where you went in before?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. Stay across the street but move left, so the garage door is to your right. Keep moving until you’re looking at the left edge of the building. You should be able to see the balconies that stick out on that side.”
“Hang on. Yeah, sure. I can see them.”
“Okay. Count up eight stories. Tell me whether you see any lights in the windows next to that balcony.”
“…six…seven…No. It’s dark.”
“Okay, now count down four floors. Wait. Is someone keeping an eye on the entrance, in case they come out?”
“Sure.” The tone is edged with impatience.
“There’s no balcony on the fourth floor, but there are windows in the same-”
“Got it. Yeah, there are lights on.”
“Son of a bitch,” Rafferty says in English. “Okay, thanks,” he says in Thai to the girl. “Get out of sight. The people Wichat wants aren’t there, and he’ll be out any minute. Wait around the corner on-”
“On Silom,” Nit says, and this time the impatience isn’t just at the edges.
“Right.” He snaps the phone closed and pops a sweat that’s pure anger.
“Well,” he says to Arthit, “we’ve got the answer to one question. Pan and Wichat still keep the chat line open.”
“On what evidence?”
“Pan just tried to sell Boo and Da to Wichat. I told Pan they were staying on the fourth floor of my apartment house. I didn’t tell anybody except Pan. And Wichat’s up there right now with some goons, probably punching holes in the walls.”
“What does that prove?” Arthit asks. “In the larger picture, I mean.”
“Well, I think we can assume that Pan is no longer the self-appointed guardian of the poor of Isaan. If he ever was. Da’s about as poor and as Isaan as it’s possible to be, and he tried to hand her to a Bangkok crook who probably wants her dead.” He kicks a tire on the nearest car, hard enough to set off a whooping alarm. “This is going to kill Rose. She thinks he’s a great man.”
Arthit says, “And then there’s Ton.” He grabs Rafferty’s arm and hauls him away from the squalling car.
“Yes,” Rafferty says. He can’t get a breath that’s deep enough to unlock his chest. “There’s Ton.”
“What do you think that’s about?” Kosit asks.
Rafferty says, “The word that comes to mind is ‘sellout.”
“Everybody else is staying put,” Rafferty says, putting the phone away. “The kids say nobody’s moving.” The three of them are sitting on plastic chairs at an outdoor noodle stall off Sukhumvit. Kosit is slurping rice noodles loudly enough to be heard over the traffic, while Arthit pushes his spoon through the broth as though he expects to discover something of value at the bottom of the bowl. Occasionally he stops shoving the utensil around and passes his hand over the bristle on his chin. All the while his eyes burn a hole in the center of the bowl.
Rafferty watches Arthit brood, thinks of three or four modestly helpful things to say, and rejects all of them. Instead he takes a mouthful of noodles and boils his tongue. He forces the scalding liquid down and grabs a glass of water, holding the coolness in his mouth on the theory that it will keep his tongue rare, as opposed to well done. He lets the silence stretch and then swallows the water and says, “It’s the only thing that makes any sense.”
Without looking up, Arthit says, “What is?”
“A deal. A terrifically secret deal. Between Ton-Mr. Establishment-and Pan. Ton must have taken a look at him and seen a guy who had peasant roots and lots of charisma, was terrifically popular, and was an obvious candidate sooner or later. The worst-case scenario would have been that Pan runs and gets elected, and Ton’s guys have got to get him out somehow. The best-case scenario would have been that he runs and gets elected-”
“And they own him,” Arthit says. He drops the spoon into the bowl. “Ton’s group aren’t against Pan running for office. They’re for it. Because they made a deal with him. They think they’re going to control the first Isaan prime minister.”
“Why would he go for it?” Kosit asks with his mouth full. “He could get elected without them.”
“I’ll make a few guesses,” Arthit says. “They tell him he won’t get assassinated during the campaign, for one thing. They say he won’t have to worry about a coup if he gets elected and that they can make everything a lot easier for him once he’s in office. Cooperation from the legislature. No pesky investigation every time he slips a million baht into his pocket.”
Rafferty says, “And I was, to use a business term, due diligence. They set me up to see whether the man could really get elected.”
“Meaning what?” Kosit says.
Rafferty takes another mouthful of water. “Ton wanted to know whether I could discover the monstrosity in Pan’s past, the thing that would make it impossible for him to get elected. I think they saw the same blank space Arthit talked about at the very beginning, the link missing in Pan’s story, the link between Pan the pimp and Pan the great industrialist. They wanted to see whether I could find out what it was. If Pan runs for national office, how likely is it that the fire at the factory will come out? If it did, it’d be fatal. People will put up with a lot from a candidate, as American politics prove over and over again, but it’s hard to put a positive spin on mass murder. Ton figures only a very small number of people know about it, and they’re all on his side. So he set me loose to see whether I’d find it. He gave me clues, put me in touch with some of the right people, because after Pan goes public as a candidate, he’ll be investigated by the best, and they won’t miss anything obvious. I was his way of knowing whether the campaign could survive the attention of the press.”