“Maybe you wrong,” Vladimir says, but at that moment the sedan’s turn indicator begins to blink. He says, “Huh.”
“Nyaaa-nyaaa,” Rafferty says. “Skip this turn and the next, then make the one after. You’ll go uphill and then take a right, and we’ll be looking down at them.”
Vladimir barks orders at Janos, and then he and Rafferty ride in silence until the second turn comes up, and Rafferty says, “One more,” and Vladimir snaps, “Yah, yah, yah.” He takes the turn and points the car up a gentle hill.
“At top?” he says.
“Yes. Kill your lights just before you turn right and then pull to the left curb.”
“Street is one-way?”
“It is.”
“This part Bangkok, I don’t know.”
“You haven’t missed much. Turn coming up.”
When Vladimir switches the lights off, Rafferty realizes that it’s gotten darker than he thought. “Go down half a block before you pull over,” he says.
“Cannot get close with no lights.” Vladimir is peering through the windshield. “They see car with no lights, they know we looking.”
“It’s dark,” Rafferty says. “It’s raining. Tell you what.” He picks up the phone and says, “Janos. Go to the next turn and then come up here and go right. I’m pretty sure you’ll drive past them, and when you do, hit your brakes for a second, slow down, and then drive away.”
“Wery good,” Vladimir says grudgingly.
“I’m learning,” Rafferty says. “Just hanging around with you, I’m learning.”
Vladimir says, “Peh,” but he looks pleased.
They make the turn, and a glance along the street tells Rafferty he was right; between the rain and the darkness, they can’t see more than a block. Vladimir pulls to the curb and puts the car in its lowest gear to slow it. Half a block down, the rain eases, and Rafferty says, “Stop,” and Vladimir uses the hand brake so the brake lights won’t come on.
The white sedan is idling at the curb on the opposite side of the street, in front of the paint store. The blond woman gets out and opens an umbrella, then takes a few slow steps until she’s dead center in the pale stain that Rafferty’s spill of paint left on the sidewalk. She stands still for a count of eight or ten and then closes her umbrella and hangs it over her left wrist. She bows her head in the rain and brings her hands up, palm to palm, to the center of her chest. She remains motionless, head down as her suit gets wet and heavy, and her hair drips with rain, until Janos’s car makes the turn and rolls past. He taps the brakes, but even the sudden gleam of red light doesn’t crack her concentration. Rafferty is asking himself whether he’s wrong as Janos’s car goes on down the hill, but then, when Vladimir says, “Look at car,” Rafferty does, and he sees the driver put his head out the window, watching Janos’s taxi.
Vladimir says, “Driwer. Driwer is professional.”
“Because you can’t,” Rafferty says. “Because I don’t want Anna to see you.”
He and Ming Li are in her room in their new hotel. It’s functional but not fancy, not even a little bit cleaner than it needs to be, and the carpet and bedclothes smell of old cigarettes. On the center of the bed, making little dents in the mattress, are two small automatic pistols, scratched and nicked, and a couple boxes of ammunition.
“I understand that,” Ming Li says, although she’s clearly not happy about it. She’s claimed the room’s armchair, which is too big for her; her feet barely graze the carpet. It makes her look like a child. “But I want to be close, just in case. I know you’re not going to call to say you’re coming, but I mean, what if she goes in the other room and uses a phone, ‘Come get him’?”
“An even better reason for you not to be there. If anything happened to you, Frank would kill me.” He’s leaning against a wall, letting his clothes drip, and he puts one foot up against it. One more scuff won’t ruin the decor.
Ming Li says, “You think he would?” She gives it a moment’s thought, lips pursed. “Anyway, you’d already be dead.”
“Well, good, then at least I won’t have to worry about Frank.”
“He called me,” Ming Li says casually. “While I was buying the guns.”
Rafferty says, “What did he want to know?”
She runs her fingers over the napped fabric on the arm of the chair, leaving five parallel lines, like sheet music. “Listen to you. Not, ‘What did he say?’ Not, ‘How was he?’ No, it’s ‘What did he want to know?’ He wanted to know how you were. How I was. He wanted to know if we needed help, if there was anyone here he should call.”
“And you said.”
“I said everything was fine, that there were no problems, and that I’d be coming home in a few days.”
Something in her tone catches Rafferty’s ear. “And?”
“And he … um, he asked me again how you’d feel about him moving back here.”
“To Bangkok.”
There’s a spark in her dark eyes. “If that’s what ‘here’ means.”
“I thought you guys had it cushy back in the States. To hear Elson tell it, you’re living like royalty. What would he do for money if he came-if you all came-here?”
“Is that really the issue?” Ming Li says. “What he’ll do for money? He’s your father, not your child. He’s not going to sponge off you.”
“I suppose-”
“But that’s not the point, is it? It’s that you’re doing the big tough-guy cowboy act: This town’s not big enough for both of you.”
“I’m not sure it is.”
“I’d be here,” Ming Li says.
“And that would be great,” he says.
A silence claims the room. She’s curled up in her chair, looking at him. Her head is pulled back on her neck as though she half expects him to take a swing at her.
“You know,” he says, “if it was okay with Frank, and if it wouldn’t bring him across the ocean, I could probably work out a way for you to stay here.”
Her eyes widen, and she doesn’t make a sound, but when she blinks, a tear slips down her cheek. Then she’s up, and her arms are around him. “You don’t know,” she says, “you can’t know, how much that means to me.”
“It’s just an-”
“I don’t belong anywhere-not America, not even China, not anymore. I’m a nuisance to my mother, and Frank … well, Frank doesn’t need me. He’d go anywhere in the world that appealed to him and never even ask if I wanted to go. He’d forget to pack me.”
Poke says, “Vladimir is crazy about you.”
She laughs and backs off, wiping her nose. “I know. But he’s not exactly what I have in mind.”
“And I’m crazy about you, too.”
“Thank you,” she says. She squares her shoulders and rubs her face with her forearm. “I won’t hold you to it, but thank you. All right, I won’t go with you to Arthit’s. I’ll be around the corner in the car, with the motor running, just in case.”
“Can you drive?”
“Better than you, in a pinch. Nobody drives like a teenager.”
He nods. A moment ticks by. He says, “And you can hold me to it.”
“Well,” she says, and takes a shaky breath. Then she abandons the sentence and goes to the bed. “You wanted small,” she says, all business. “Mrs. Ma had a lot of Chinese guns, but Frank always called them ‘three-finger specials’ because they blow up all the time, so these are both Colts. They’re kind of beat up, and this one fires hot, Mrs. Ma said, but they work.” She picks up the smaller and racks it, the slide smooth and precise-sounding. “Forty-five. Kicks like a horse, according to Mrs. Ma, so I figure this one is yours.” She taps the barrel on a box. “Ammo here. And the other one is mine.” She drops the gun back on the bed and licks her lips, looking down at them. “She said hello, by the way. Mrs. Ma did.”
“I couldn’t have gotten through this without you,” he says.
“I know that. But don’t make me cry anymore. It messes up my self-image.”
“Fine.” He pushes off from the wall. “I’m going to put on a dry shirt, and then we’ll go.”
“I’ll drive.”
“No,” he says. “Let’s save that weapon until we need it. Which we probably will.”