“In love, to hear her tell it.”
“Well, so is Andrew. He’s come by looking for her, as though this whole thing is a plot to separate them. He looks completely lost.”
“I’ll tell her that. It’ll make her feel better.”
“To know that the guy she loves is unhappy? That’ll make her feel better?”
“Of course.”
“I give up,” Rafferty says. “Women are like cave paintings. You know what they look like, but not what they mean.”
“This isn’t mysterious. She’s stuck up here, missing someone who’s probably forgotten her, who’s cutting a swath through the girls of Bangkok-”
“Andrew?”
“And to learn instead that he’s lonely, maybe even a little heartbroken, wandering around, lost in a gray cloud-”
“He is.”
“Good,” she says. “He should be.”
He’s using one foot to peel a soggy sock off the other. “I can’t tell you how much I miss you.”
“Sure you can,” she says. “You haven’t even tried yet.”
“Let me think. Okay, so here you go: A spirit appears before me-”
“Male or female?”
“Male. With a mustache and long, curving blue teeth. And he says, ‘I’m going to give you two choices. You can have one or the other, but you can’t choose neither and you can’t choose both.’ Are you with me?”
“Of course. A million stories begin this way.”
“The first thing the spirit offers me is, I get to see you for an hour. The second thing is, it will rain as long as I live, and I’ll live for centuries.”
“And which one would you choose?”
“Well,” he says, “if my socks weren’t wet-”
“I’d choose the same,” she says. “I’d rather be with you right now, wet socks and all, than anything else in the world. Do they smell?”
“Of course.”
“Send them up to me. I need them.”
He rolls onto his side and comes face-to-face with the little automatic that Ming Li bought him that afternoon. “Whatever happens,” he says, “I want you to know that I love you more than the rest of the world put together.”
“What about Miaow?”
“Miaow’s a special exception.”
“She certainly is,” Rose says. “Right now she’s sitting outside under a big tree, very dramatically getting wet.”
“Give her a kiss from me. Tell her it’s from Andrew.”
“No,” Rose says. “Let her get wet. I’ll keep the kisses for myself.”
HE RACKS THE gun and dry-fires it a few times, trying to get used to the feel of it in his hand. It’s not as heavy as his Glock, but it’s bulkier and more awkward. Then he pops the magazine in and handles it some more, getting used to its loaded weight. He doesn’t like it much, but he figures it’ll put down anything it hits.
The loaded gun and the remaining shells go on the bed table. He gets the hotel hair dryer from the bathroom and sticks it into his socks, one at a time, watching them balloon and steam until they’re dry. Then he uses it on the inside of the fake-leather bag until a sort of chemistry-is-not-your-friend smell makes him stop and let it cool for a while. He uses the time to assemble his clothes for the next day: his better-looking pair of pants, his still-wet belt, and a big shirt he can wear outside the trousers to hide the gun.
He takes the hair dryer to the bag again, getting it mostly dry before it starts to go toxic, then waves the dryer around inside his shoes, getting them warm and wet instead of cold and wet. In the interest of readiness, he puts on the clothes for tomorrow, stashes the gun inside his belt, and practices getting at it until he can clear the shirt most of the time, until his hip has memorized the gun’s position and his index finger has memorized the location of the trigger guard.
He takes the clothes off again and lays them on the armchair, along with the dry socks and the gun and the bullets and the fake-leather bag and the hotel’s umbrella, which he removes from the closet. He makes a semifinal pass through the room to double-check that he’s got everything, because they won’t be coming back the following night. Recognizes that most of what he’s doing is just nervousness finding an outlet and leans against the wall.
All I wanted to do, he thinks, was paint my apartment.
By now, or at the latest by tomorrow morning, Anna will have gotten word to Shen, who either does or doesn’t already know about the arrangement at the shopping mall, depending on whether Murphy saw fit to share it. It’s academic one way or the other, since Rafferty will be on the other side of Bangkok while they wait for him at the mall, but it will still be interesting to see whether the opposing team is intact.
In any case, there’s nothing he can do about it now. There’s really nothing he can do about anything now, except worry about Ming Li. Which, of course, is exactly what she told him not to do.
So he worries about Ming Li until a little after four, when he finally falls asleep.
30
“This gun is a pig,” Ming Li says, pointing it through the glass of the passenger window. “Did you ever use a steak knife that’s got all the weight in the handle, and every time you lay it on your plate, it falls off?”
“No.” He works his way into the turn lane.
“Oh, you did so.”
“And this gun is like that, is it?”
“Yes.”
“Compared to what?”
She glances at him quickly. “To a good gun.”
“What make? What caliber?”
“A Burpmeister,” she says through her teeth. “Thirty-three-and-a-third caliber.”
“Boy, that was a gun,” he says. “How many guns have you actually fired?”
At first he thinks she won’t answer, but then she says, “Three. No, four. All three-finger specials. But I promise you, they balanced differently than this one.”
“Ever shoot one at somebody?”
“Trees,” she says. “A few bottles. But I’ll tell you something, and you can believe it or not. There are people for whom there’s a big difference between firing at a tree and firing at a person. And I’m not actually one of them.”
He makes the turn. The day is drawing to a dark, wet close, and the street has three or four inches of water in it. “Unless the person is firing back at you.”
“That’s a different issue,” she says. “That’s not getting killed. Killing is different. I’m already good at not getting killed, and I don’t believe I need practice at killing. A person is a target, same as a tree, only it moves faster.”
“Let’s hope we don’t have to find out whether that’s true.”
“You’re such a sexist,” she says. “There was a time in your life when you hadn’t killed anybody, right?”
“Obviously.”
“And then, all of a sudden, you had to, and you … you what?”
“I killed her,” he says, although he still doesn’t like to think about it.
“And you don’t think I can do the same? Why?”
“It’s not that I don’t think you can,” he says. “I just hope you won’t have to.”
“You are so lying,” she says, and the phone in Rafferty’s shirt pocket rings.
“Thai kid is waiting,” Vladimir says. “Where you are now?”
A flock of black birds breaks from the trees in front of them and swoops over the car, so low it looks as if the windshield wipers will bat one aside. “Almost there. Let the kid wait, he’s getting paid. Where is he?”
“With me. I should be in backseat. With you and Baby Spy.”
“Stay where you are. Keep the kid with you. We’re not doing anything until we hear from Janos.”
“I should be there, too,” Vladimir says. “With Janos. I should be ewerywhere.”
“You’re where I want you. Just stay there. I’ll call you if you have to move.” The phone beeps to signal an incoming call. “Stay off the phone,” Rafferty says, punching the button to bring up the new call.