Rafferty says, “Thank you.”
For a few slow, waterlogged miles, he drives to the sound of Neeni’s snoring. He says, “She’s going to want a drink when she wakes up.”
“She’s going to want a drink every moment of the day for months,” Hwa says.
Rafferty makes the turn onto Silom, feeling the nearness of the apartment ease the tightness in his chest. To Ming Li he says, “What is it? What are you thinking about?”
“Vladimir,” she says.
Some of the strain immediately comes back. “Yeah. Me, too.”
“At first I thought he was just waiting for a chance to sell you out, but then he … he changed somehow, and I thought, well, maybe I was wrong.”
“He likes you,” Rafferty says. “He’s got an eye for talent. And it doesn’t hurt that you’re beautiful.”
“Whatever it was. I thought he was with us. But somebody told Murphy we were at his house, and I don’t know who else-”
“Oh,” Hwa says. “That was me. I did it.”
Ming Li turns to her. “How?”
“I was worried about Neeni,” she says. “I didn’t know what you really wanted.”
“The phone button,” Rafferty says.
“And I lied about it.” Hwa looks again at Rafferty in the rearview mirror. “I’m sorry.”
“No problem,” he says. “Keep taking care of her that well and everything will be fine.”
Ming Li pushes past him and stops, surveying the room. “God. No wonder you’ve been sleeping in hotels.”
“Oh, no,” Rafferty says, exhausted at the sight of the place. “I’d forgotten how bad it was. At least it doesn’t still stink of paint.” Feeling like he weighs a thousand pounds, he steps aside and lets Hwa in, leading a blinking, confused-looking Neeni by the hand. “Take her to the couch,” he says. His voice sounds ragged, and his throat is raw. “It’s the one thing you can get to. Beer?” he says to Ming Li without thinking, and then says, “Of course not.”
“Of course yes,” she says. “I’ve got it coming, after tonight.”
“As long as we’re breaking rules,” Rafferty says to Hwa, “do you think a drink would help her? We’ve got some Crown Royal someone gave us a few years ago, but I don’t think it spoils. And would you like something?”
“Bring her the whiskey, a good big glass of it. When she’s lying down-Is there a bed somewhere?”
“There will be in a minute.”
Neeni’s eyes have come up at the mention of the word “whiskey,” and she’s looking from Rafferty to Hwa and back again.
“When she’s lying down,” Hwa says, “I’ll make some tea.”
“Fine.” He looks around the familiar space, and all he wants to do is curl up and sleep. You want to help me, Ming Li?”
In the kitchen he pulls out his last two big bottles of Singha as Ming Li takes a drinking glass from the cupboard. She stands there, looking at the other cupboards, which are closed. “Whiskey?”
“To the left. Behind some cans of stuff, in a blue sort-of-velvet bag.” He opens the drawer, takes out the bottle opener, flips it into the air, closes his eyes, and puts out his hand. The moment his eyes close, the floor dips beneath him, and as he opens them, the bottle opener lands with a flat, reassuring smack, dead center in his palm. To Ming Li, who is staring at him with one eyebrow raised, he says, “My luck is back.”
Twenty minutes later Neeni and Hwa are set up in Poke and Rose’s room, and he and Ming Li, whose face is turning stop-sign red from the beer, have put new sheets on Miaow’s bed and moved things around to create a path to the door. “Bathroom’s on the left,” he says as she follows him into the living room. He hears Hwa clanking the teapot in the kitchen and takes a quick peek into his bedroom, where Neeni is sitting on the far side of the bed, her back to the door, drinking.
“I’m not going to sleep in Miaow’s room,” Ming Li says. “You are.”
“Wrong. I’m sleeping here.”
She gives the couch a disapproving look and drains the rest of her beer. “It looks too short.”
“I’ve slept on it before.”
Ming Li yawns enormously. “It’s not too short for me.”
Hwa comes out of the kitchen with the mug Rose always uses, steaming away like a witch’s kettle. She says, “Do you have some socks I could wear?”
“Second drawer of that … that thing in there.” He waves his hand at the bedroom. “The dresser.”
“I like to sleep in socks,” Hwa announces, and goes into Poke and Rose’s room, shutting the door behind her.
Rafferty collapses onto the couch and folds himself forward like someone fighting a faint. The events of the past hour or so, which he’s been holding at bay with action, swirl in his head, a jumble of color and noise and blood and eyes: Treasure’s eyes, Ming Li’s eyes as she stared at Murphy. He breathes slowly and regularly, staring at the carpet, and lets the feelings catch up with him. A noise brings him back into the room. Ming Li is looking down at him.
“You okay?”
“Getting there,” he says. “That awful leather bag. Can you bring it to me?”
She picks it up beside the door, where Rafferty dropped it, and hands it to him. He pulls out cell phone after cell phone until he has his old one, the one he used before everything began. Holding it again, back in his own apartment, he begins to believe that it might actually all be over.
As he dials, Ming Li says,
“Older brother, not to doubt your judgment, but is it safe here?”
“We’ll know in a second. Okay, shhh.” He looks up at her, scoots over to make room on the couch, and then says, into the phone, “I need to talk to Shen. Tell him it’s Rafferty.”
Ming Li says, “Shen?”
“Now or never,” he says to her. He waits a moment, until he hears, “Hello.”
He closes his eyes, grabs a deep breath, and says, “I wanted to tell you I’m at home, and I’d appreciate your letting me stay here. And there are reasons you should.”
Shen says nothing.
“Murphy is dead. Do you want to hear about it?”
“It’s eleven-thirty at night. You’ve had people wake me up. What else do I have to do?”
“He pulled me out of that mall, the one you didn’t see me in, and cuffed me and took me to his house. He was pretty crazy, talking about how I had screwed him over and that the best thing for him to do would be to disappear. His daughter was in the house-” Rafferty stops for a second and clears his throat. “She was having some sort of breakdown.”
“That poor child,” Shen says.
“He took a briefcase full of money out of a closet and put it in his car, I guess. Anyway, out through the front door. Then he poured gasoline all over the place and set fire to it, then hauled the girl and the maid and that sedated wife of his out. I got my hands free-”
“How?”
“An ancient yoga technique that took me years to learn,” he snaps. “Do you want me to explain it to you?”
The couch shifts. He opens his eyes to see Ming Li getting up, shaking her head, and going into the kitchen.
“No.”
“And I broke the side window. There were two guns on the windowsill. I took one and went through the window, and when I came around the house, he shot at me. I shot him, maybe twice, and then the little girl screamed and ran into the house, and he followed her, even though I think he was hit pretty bad. And I backed the hell away, and the place blew up.”
Shen lets a moment or two pass. “That’s quite a story.”
Rafferty hears the refrigerator open and close.
“I know. I’d barely believe it myself, except that the witnesses-the maid and the wife-saw it the same way.”
“Did they.” It’s not a question.
“They did, and that leads me to my second point. I know you’ve been told about the things I did regarding Murphy during the past week or so, because I intentionally said them to someone who would tell you. They’re all true. The U.S. embassy will abandon him in a heartbeat, deny any connection at all. But I didn’t tell your friend everything. For example, I didn’t tell her that there are four living witnesses to the worst thing he did there during the war, a rampage that killed nobody except women, children, and old men. Those survivors will be available to the papers, if it comes to that. When Murphy added all that up, he said that the best thing for him to do would be to disappear. What I think he meant by that was-”