“I’ve got oil. What about the lever?”
“I can fix the lever. But you need more. .” Kosit searches for the word, then brings his hands slowly together and pulls them apart quickly.
Rafferty says, “Shit. Well, it’s not the end of the world. I don’t think I’ll need this. It’s just insurance.”
Kosit sits back, looking doubtfully at the suitcase, at the mess they have made. Then his face clears, and he points at the mattress. His eyebrows come up in a question.
“Sure,” Rafferty says. “If the next four or five hours go wrong, I’ll never sleep on it again anyway.”
He gets up and goes into the living room to get the books and an X-acto knife. The production line is in full swing. The dryer, with the last load in it, is running in the kitchen. Two women crumple or fold the bills and smooth them again. Another chooses one bill out of four or five and makes a small mark with a felt-tip, either black or red, like those used by banks. Fon has taken to writing random phone numbers with a ballpoint pen on every tenth or twelfth bill. She passes the bills on to Mrs. Pongsiri, who sorts the baht and the dollars into two stacks and smooths them again.
Suddenly Mrs. Pongsiri breaks into a laugh and then reaches over and swats Fon lightly on top of the head. The other girls gather round to look at the bill, and then they all laugh. Rafferty reaches for it and turns it over. It is an American hundred. In the slender margin at the edge, Fon has carefully written, “Love you long time.”
Getting into the spirit, Mrs. Pongsiri says, “Roll up some of the American hundreds. Roll them very tightly and then unroll them again.”
Kosit, framed in the doorway to the bedroom, eyes her narrowly for a moment and then says, “Good idea.”
“Americans in my club,” Mrs. Pongsiri says, hurrying the words. She has apparently just remembered that Kosit is a cop. “They do that all the time, and then they inhale something through it.”
“Probably vitamin C,” Kosit says. “I’m sure there are no drugs at your club.”
“Very high-end,” Mrs. Pongsiri agrees.
“What’s the name of your club?” Kosit asks.
“It’s called Rempflxnblt,” says Mrs. Pongsiri, sneezing most of the word into her palm. She presses an index finger beneath her nostrils. “Sorry. It’s the perfume in the fabric softener.”
“Mrs. Pongsiri my mama-san once,” Fon says cheerfully in English. Mrs. Pongsiri blanches. “Same-same with Lek and Jah. Very good mama-san. Never hit girls, never take money.”
“Almost never,” Lek says, and the other women laugh again.
Lek is wrapping rubber bands around the stacks: ten thousand dollars per stack in American hundreds, one hundred bills in each stack of thousand-baht notes. She ran out of rubber bands ten minutes ago, and the women removed a remarkable variety of elastic loops from their hair. Mrs. Pongsiri traipsed down the hall a second time and came back with a box containing enough scrunchies to style a yeti. Rafferty is a little worried about the predominance of beauty products, but he figures if the stacks are mixed up enough, they won’t be so conspicuous.
With a thwack, Lek snaps a bright pink scrunchie around a wad of thousand-baht notes, and Rafferty’s cell phone shrills. Every eye in the room goes to him as he opens the phone and puts it to his ear.
“Coming up,” Leung says. “With a surprise.”
“What I don’t need right now is a surprise.”
“This is a surprise you’d rather have now than later. You might want to meet me in the hall.” He hangs up.
“How much more?” Rafferty asks the women.
“Halfway done,” Fon says. “We kept some to speed things up.” The other women laugh, some more heartily than others.
“If you do,” Rafferty says, “take the stuff on the coffee table. It may not be as pretty, but it’s real.” He pulls a dozen hardcover books of approximately the same size off the shelf and heads for the bedroom. He has just dropped them in front of Kosit, who is sitting on the bed, which has a long rip in it where the policeman worked out a spring, when the doorbell rings.
“Listen,” Kosit says. “The bedsprings aren’t enough.”
“Well, Jesus,” Rafferty says. He can barely focus on the problem. “Use anything.”
Kosit shakes his head. “I don’t know-”
“Use those,” Rafferty says, pointing to the stun grenades hanging from Kosit’s belt. “That ought to open things up.”
Kosit tilts one up and lets it drop back. “I’m not sure. The pins are hard to pop. They take a good hard tug. I don’t know if the lever-”
The doorbell rings again. “Please,” Rafferty says. “Solve it.” He goes back into the living room and opens the door, just enough to squeeze out into the hallway.
Leung stands there, water dripping off the end of his nose, a canvas bag hanging from his shoulder. The gun in his hand is pointed at the fat cop and the thin cop. Pradya and Sriyat, Rafferty thinks. The fat cop, Pradya, tries on a smile.
Rafferty looks at the three of them, and an overwhelming weariness seizes hold of him. He leans against the wall and closes his eyes for a moment, trying to find a way to make this new development work to his advantage. When he opens his eyes again, Pradya has given up on his smile. “You,” Rafferty says to Sriyat. “Go back to Chu. Take your time, but go back. Tell him whatever you want. Tell him Leung caught you, I don’t care. Tell him we kept Pradya.” Sriyat doesn’t even nod, just turns to ring for the elevator. “Do you still know which side you’re on?” Rafferty asks.
Sriyat turns his head a quarter of the way, his mouth a taut line. “Not much choice,” he says.
“Make sure you remember that,” Rafferty says. To Pradya and Leung, he says, “Come on in. I’ll try to find you someplace to sit.”
41
"Very fucking cute,” Rafferty says into the phone. “Sending those clowns after Ming Li.” “You changed the rules when you lied to me,” Chu says.
“Oh, gosh,” Rafferty says, “and we’d established such an atmosphere of trust.” His eyes scan the room. The fat cop, Pradya, sits on the couch, head down, with Leung standing over him. The women paw through the rubies in the box, their eyes wide. Leung is watching their hands. Kosit is busy with the suitcase in the bedroom.
“You’ve been in contact with Frank,” Chu accuses. “All along.”
“No. Just the past eight hours or so. He called me with some news, and I didn’t want to share it with you.”
“What news?”
“Don’t get excited about this. In the end you’ll be happy about it.”
“I’ll decide what I’m happy about. What is it?”
“He sold your rubies.”
“Yes,” Chu says, dragging the word out. “I can see why you wouldn’t want to tell me that. Just out of curiosity, how much did he get?”
“About a million four.”
“Dollars, of course.”
“Sure. Even with you on his tail, he’s not going to sell them for a million and a half baht.”
“He could have gotten more. I assume you have the money.”
“I’ve got better than that. I’ve got the money and I’ve also got the rubies.”
“You’ve got. . you said he sold them.”
“He did.”
“Then how did you get them?”
“Violence,” Rafferty says. Leung looks over at him and grins.
“You’re better than he is,” Chu says. “Better than he was in his prime.”
“Don’t make me blush. Here’s the deaclass="underline" The money evens things up. You have three items of Arthit’s and mine, and I have three items for you. We’re going to make one trade at a time. No promises, no IOUs, no payment for future delivery, no address left behind where we can find them. Cash for Noi, in the flesh. Rubies for Rose. Frank for Miaow.”
Chu says, “Have you looked in the box?”
Careful, Rafferty thinks. “Frank popped the lid and showed me the stones. That’s a lot of rubies.”