"Hip-hop? MTV?" Ming Li looks at her father and shakes her head. "The Internet? Can't be Internet addresses, can't be chess moves."
"I'd recognize chess moves," Frank says. "If you're right, if you're close to being able to read this and I'm not, then it's something generational. Something you do, something you know, that I don't."
"I've been trying to reach a guy who works with codes," Rafferty says. "I could try to phone him again."
Ming Li looks up. Her eyes are slightly glassy. "Phone?" she says.
"Yeah," Rafferty says. "You know, small object, you push a bunch of buttons and put it to your ear. Then somebody says-"
"Oh, for heaven's sake," Ming Li says. She extends a hand. "Give it to me."
Rafferty passes her his phone. For a moment her eyes go back and forth between the phone and the note, and then her face splits into a wide grin.
"Your little girl is really smart," she says. "And you guys are so old." She looks at the phone again, her lips moving. "It's a text message," she says. "Somebody get me a pencil."
"Once you see the pairs, it's obvious," Ming Li says. "There are no three-digit numbers, there's no second number higher than four. I should have recognized it the minute I looked at it. Look. The first number in each pair is the number on the button. The second one is the number of times you push to get to the letter you want. So '6' is the six button, and if you push it one time, you get M. Push it twice, you get N. Three times is O." She points at the paper, isolating the one pair of numbers. "Here, the first time she writes it, it's '61,' so that's M."
They are all gathered around her. "And the '4,' the one that's not in a pair?" Rafferty asks.
"It's just what it looks like, silly," Ming Li says. "It's a four." She finishes writing, puts dashes between the words, and pushes the pad away so they can all see it.
It says:
4-men-guns-mole-kl Tears spring to Rafferty's eyes. He turns his head to blink them away, but he can't do anything about the sudden catch in his throat. Miaow.
"You should be proud of yourself," Ming Li says. "That's some kid." He swallows, hard. "I can't take the credit," he says. "She was interrupted," Arthit says, bent over the pad. Rafferty grabs a ragged breath.
"She needed time to fold it, time to put it someplace, probably hide it in her hand, so she could drop it." "KL," Ming Li says. Her eyebrows are contracted so tightly they almost meet.
"Look what she gives us," Arthit says. "Everything is important. A count, a description. She tells us there are guns. She's got no time. What else is that important?"
Rafferty says, "Destination."
Leung speaks for the first time. "Kuala Lumpur?"
Rafferty and Ming Li say, in unison, "No." Then Rafferty says, "He's here, obviously. And he'll stay here for this swap or whatever it's going to be."
"It has to be a destination," Frank says. "Maybe…" His voice trails off.
"I'm not even sure Miaow knows Kuala Lumpur is two words," Rafferty says. "I think she probably would have started with Ku or something."
"I know where it is," Frank says. "I know what she was writing."
"So do I," Arthit says. "Klong Toey." "Where their ships come in," Frank says. "Where they offload everything. Illegal immigrants, illegal pharmaceuticals, endangered animals, aphrodisiacs made from endangered animals, weapons, truck parts, hijacked American cars, Korean counterfeit money. They've got three warehouses down there, prime position near the docks."
"Three," Ming Li says. "Two too many. We could watch all week."
"No," Rafferty says. "All we have to do is get some eyes on them and then pull him out."
"Pull him out?" Frank says. "How?" "He's set it up himself."
Rafferty holds up his phone. "I call him."
31
Aurora Borealis
Whoever is in charge of the rain has turned it up and provided an enhancement in the form of random bursts of wind that send people running for cover. The rain falls through a pinpoint mist that diffuses the light from the neon signs above them and scatters it through the night like a fine, colored powder.
"So what do you think of Dad?"
"I think he could be useful," Arthit says, lighting up and blowing smoke through his nostrils like a cartoon bull. The smoke fills the car, and Rafferty takes a surreptitious secondhand hit. "I'll suspend further judgment until we see just how useful he is." The rain spatters the top of Arthit's car and sends rivulets racing each other down the windshield. The sidewalk where they are parked is deserted except for one beggar huddled under a bright blue plastic sheet, and the car smells of wet cloth.
"If I'd had any idea Noi would be in danger-" Rafferty begins.
Arthit holds up the hand with the cigarette in it. His face is hard enough to deflect a bullet. "Stop it. It was my decision, not yours. We can either sit here and comfort each other or we can do something.
"So we have to get them back." Arthit checks the sidewalk, just a cop's reflex. "By the way, you're fortunate in your women."
"Meaning?"
"Rose and Miaow, of course. And your sister is, as they used to say in England, crackerjack."
Rafferty watches Bangkok ripple through the windshield like a ghost city. "I guess so."
"We'll get them," Arthit says. "Your father is right: One thing at a time."
"Set up the watchers."
"Two cops and Ming Li," Arthit says.
"I still think he might recognize her."
"He hasn't seen her since she was ten," Arthit says. "And even then, your father says he didn't pay any attention to her." He cracks the window, gets a faceful of rain, and rolls it up again. He takes another puff in self-defense. "Anyway, half the cops I could pull aren't as good as she is."
"She's a kid."
"A very smart kid. And there's one more thing to recommend her: Unlike some cops, we know she's not on Chu's payroll."
"I wish I were certain Leung isn't."
Arthit shakes his head. "Doesn't make sense. If Leung were working with Chu, none of this would be necessary. Your father would be ten feet underwater and halfway to the gulf by now." He starts the car and slides the lever to kick up the air-conditioning. Then he stares out through the windshield and sighs deeply. "You don't know this," he says, "but my father was a cop."
Rafferty looks over at him. Arthit fiddles with the temperature controls.
"On the take, of course." Arthit still does not turn to face Poke. The air conditioner seems to require all his attention, and the cigarette burns forgotten in his free hand. "All Thai cops were on the take in those days. He took from everybody. He took money to keep people out of jail. The old one-two-three: Get the case, crack the case, take a bribe. Pimps, thieves, hired muscle. Twice, or at least twice that I know of, a murderer." The rain kicks up, shaped by a sudden gust of wind into a curtain of faintly colored mist that ripples and curls in front of Rafferty's eyes like the aurora borealis. "Of course, usually that meant other people went to jail. See, when a cop takes a payoff, the crime doesn't go away. Somebody's got to take a fall."
Poke wants to put an arm around Arthit's shoulders but is sure it wouldn't be appreciated. "I know."
"So the guilty got off and the innocent got screwed," Arthit says. "That's what my father did for a living. He did it practically every day. But you know what, Poke? There was always food on the table. My brother and I went to school. I wound up in England, getting a very expensive education paid for by crooks and, I suppose, by the people who were stuck in those cells for things they didn't do." He puts his face near the window and exhales a cloud of smoke onto the glass, then wipes it clear with his sleeve. "Because of where my father was, who he was. That was what he had to do to live, to take care of the people he loved. And he did. He took care of all of us."