Captain Teeth says, “Show me the phone.”
“I…I don’t have it. He, I mean Boo, he took it away from me, and-”
“Fine. Right. You had it but you don’t have it. You two,” he says to two of the men with guns. “Go through this building, every fucking room. Look under stuff. Look up at the ceilings. There’s a woman and a kid here somewhere, and I need them.”
One of the men glances around and says, “I’d rather stay here.”
“And I’d rather be in bed with five college girls. But I’m not. Get going, or I’ll leave you here when we go back to the city.”
“Okay, okay.” The man who argued looks at the other man who’s been chosen. “Do we have to split up?”
“You can go piggyback for all I care. But find them.”
With obvious reluctance the two men leave the lit room and enter a hallway that leads to the back of the building.
Pan says, “You’re making a mistake.”
“Well, you’ve got the experience to know,” Captain Teeth says. “You’ve fucked up so bad that nobody needs you anymore.”
“Ton,” Pan says. “I need to talk to Ton. He and I can work this out.”
“He’s finished with you. Just shut up and wait. Someone shut that dog up.”
“It doesn’t belong to anybody,” Boo says. “It lives here.” The dog is showing its teeth now, the hair along its spine bristling.
“Well, let’s fix that.” Captain Teeth lowers the barrel of his gun and sights over it. There’s a sudden movement in the group of people between the sewing machines, and within the second it takes Captain Teeth to look up again, Pan has his arms wrapped around Da’s shoulders and is crouched behind her, using her as a shield as he backs toward the door.
“I’m leaving,” he says. He takes a few more steps backward, pulling Da along next to him. Da’s eyes scour the room, looking for help.
“Fuckup,” Captain Teeth says, and he brings the gun up and shoots Da.
The bullet lifts her off her feet and slams her back against Pan. He grabs her by instinct, but then her legs crumple beneath her and she’s dropping, her mouth open in amazement, as she tries to bring the other arm up, tries to get it under Peep. Pan staggers forward, pulled off balance by her weight, and he looks down at her face, at her wide, sightless eyes. The generator, which has been coughing outside, shuts down, and slowly, in the new silence, Pan lowers Da to the floor, his eyes on hers all the way down. At the last moment, he slips a hand beneath her head as it nears the concrete. When she is flat on her back, he eases his hand out from under her and his head comes up, his mouth gaping, and a scream rips itself loose from the center of his belly, a scream that threatens to empty even a man so large, and he stands and spreads his arms, making an even bigger target, moves carefully around Da, and takes two steps toward Captain Teeth.
Captain Teeth fires again, and Pan staggers a half step back, arms still spread as though in invitation, and then moves forward again. Captain Teeth fires again and again, and as Pan shudders and falls, there are shots from Rafferty’s left, and he turns to see Arthit pouring fire into Captain Teeth, using the gun he took from Pan, and as Captain Teeth goes down, Arthit turns and fires at the three men left in the room, dropping one of them, and the other two break for the door and disappear into the night.
The dog ignores the shooting and goes to the heap of clothes and blood that is Da, standing over her as Peep starts to cry. The dog begins to howl.
Kosit goes to Captain Teeth’s body and grabs his gun, then charges back into the factory, after the other two men. Rafferty and Boo drop to their knees on either side of Da, and Boo picks up Peep and rocks him, tears streaming down his face. Rafferty is probing Da’s wrist for a pulse when he hears the shots from the rear of the factory. And then it’s quiet except for the dog’s howls.
The factory is a flickering wash of red and blue lights. “It’s over,” Rafferty says into the phone. He is sitting in a patrol car. “It’s not the ending you wanted, but it’s over.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ton says on the other end of the phone.
“Pan’s dead. So are three of the people you sent after him. You might want to be on the lookout for the other two. This place is wall-to-wall cops. There’s nothing to tie any of it to you-”
“I should think not.”
“Except a videotape of Pan talking about his arrangement with you. The quality’s not real high, but there was plenty of light, and what he said will have quite a bit of news value.”
A pause. When Ton speaks, Rafferty can hear the strain in his voice. “No one will use it.”
“Maybe not. Maybe not for a couple of years, maybe not until things have changed. But things will change, and when they do, these tapes will just be waiting. And do you think there’s a chance the new guys will want to nail you by the wrists and ankles to the pavement on the expressway and back a truck over you?”
“Hypotheticals.”
“Here’s something that’s not hypotheticaclass="underline" My wife and my daughter and I are going home, and we’re going to live there safely and happily, without worrying about looking over our shoulders. And as long as we stay that way, happy and safe, the copies of these tapes will be at the bottom of the ocean. So to speak. But the minute something happens to any of us, they’ll bob up again. These are people you’ll never in a million years be able to identify, people I don’t even know, two or three removes from me, who will know exactly what to do with the tapes, who to give them to. And they will do it, if anything happens to my family and me. Is that clear?”
“As I said, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that.”
After a moment Ton says, “I don’t deal well with irritation. The tapes sound irritating.”
“Well, they won’t be, as long as you-”
“And what about you? You have the potential to be irritating.”
“I won’t be. I’ve got people to protect.”
“Yes, you do,” Ton says. “Go home.” He hangs up.
Rafferty folds his phone, closes his eyes, and listens to the ambulance siren die away in the distance.
50
The living room of Arthit’s house is crowded and noisy. The seat of honor-the reclining chair Arthit bought to watch the American cop shows he and Noi used to laugh at-is occupied by Noi’s mother, a tiny woman with a prodigiously concentrated energy field that keeps her daughters and grandchildren spinning in tight orbits around her. Her wispy silver hair, thinning and uncontrollable, creates a formless nimbus of light around her head that Rafferty thinks is an appropriate effect for a gathering that follows a cremation.
Arthit sits in full uniform on the couch, behind the coffee table. His eyes are red-rimmed, but he’s laughing almost unwillingly at something that’s just been said by the husband of one of Noi’s sisters, an appointed official in a minor province, someone who would have been on Ton’s side if it had come to that.
“He’s going to be all right,” Rose says, following Rafferty’s gaze. “He’s a good man, and he had years and years with a good woman. Everything but the end was a blessing. And who knows about the end? Karma is complicated. Maybe that was a fire they both had to go through.”
“At least he can be a cop again,” Rafferty says. “The kids’ video makes him a hero. He’s the one who took down the thug who killed Pan.”
“That’s such a man reaction,” Rose says.
“Well, he’s a man. What do you want me to do, enroll him in the Chrysanthemum-of-the-Month Club until he feels better? He told me he’d find his way back at his own speed, and having something to do will help. Men have spirits, too, Rose. We’re not floor lamps. Men’s spirits just heal better behind a screen of activity. As of the Sunday-night TV news, he’s the most famous cop in Thailand, and there’s nothing Thanom can do except try to crowd into the newspaper pictures alongside him. The people in the northeast would probably vote for him for prime minister. Not that he’s crazy enough to do anything about it.”