“Come on along,” Chu says into the phone. “I want to get a look at you.”
“This phone’s going to short out,” Rafferty says, moving forward. “It’s too wet. I’m turning it off now.”
“Up to you.”
Rafferty’s thumb finds the “disconnect” button and then, very quickly, he highlights the next number he will need. He slips the phone into a small Ziploc bag and puts it in his shirt pocket, buttons facing out. Instinctively he finds the “dial” button with his thumb. Then he does it again, walking all the time. He is about to do it yet again when Chu’s form begins to solidify in front of him. Rafferty drops his hands to his sides and flexes his fingers repeatedly like a pianist about to tackle something difficult. They feel as stiff as sticks.
Ten feet away he stops and waits. Chu waves him closer, Asian style, palm and fingers down, but Rafferty shakes his head. A moment passes. Rafferty can feel something extending between him and Chu, something taut that pulsates like a high-voltage wire. Chu mutters irritably and trudges forward. Once Chu is moving, Rafferty continues toward him.
Chu is frailer than Rafferty imagined, and older. Somehow he had continued to see the Colonel Chu his father had described from all those years ago in Wang’s room, not this papery retiree. The sudden image of Wang, stripped and shivering, being offered to dogs and horses, ignites a hot surge of fury. Rafferty damps it down as fast as he can, fearing it will travel the wire to Chu, and in fact Chu slows and regards him quizzically. But then he shakes his head again and smiles.
“You don’t look like him.” They are three feet apart.
“I thank my mother daily,” Rafferty says.
Chu’s face is a nest of creases, a topography of age folded into the skin around his eyes and mouth. His eyelids hang down at weary forty-fivedegree angles, the eyes behind them as dry and hard as stone. His neck is two vertical ropes, the tendons taut beneath the skin. Deep grooves have been carved on either side of his mouth, and they deepen when he smiles. He is smiling now, a kind, grandfatherly, yellow-toothed smile that makes Rafferty wonder how much strength it would take to snap his neck. Beads of water glisten on the hairs sprouting from his mole.
“You’re smaller than I thought you’d be,” Rafferty says.
“Our fears always are,” Chu says, “when we finally have the strength to look at them.”
“I’ll remember that.”
A gust of wind catches Chu’s slicker, billows it out, and snaps a corner up, throwing a spray of water at Rafferty. “This is a filthy city,” Chu says. “I’m quite ready to leave it. I assume you have everything you owe me.”
“And you?”
“I never go into a business meeting,” Chu says, “without the currency I’ll need. They’re all here, a little wet but otherwise well. Eager to see you. Shall we begin?”
“Let’s,” Rafferty says. “I’m ready for you to leave Bangkok, too.”
“First, though,” Chu says, and he waves his hand. A man comes around the corner of the warehouse behind him. He carries an automatic weapon slung from his shoulder. When he gets closer, Rafferty sees a swollen upper lip, pulled high enough to reveal a broken tooth.
“This is Ping,” Chu says. “He’s going with you, just to see whom you’ve left around the corner.”
Rafferty says, “The hell he is.”
“Be reasonable. For all I know, you’ve got a car full of cops.”
Rafferty looks at Ping. Ping sucks his tooth and winces.
“I thought you watched us come in.”
“You may not have noticed,” Chu says, “but visibility is limited. Ping is not negotiable. He takes a look or we both walk away right now.”
“The gun stays here,” Rafferty says.
“Fine,” Chu says, too easily, and it causes Rafferty a twinge of discomfort. “Ping?”
Ping unshoulders the gun and passes it over to Chu. Rafferty steps forward, pats Ping down, extracts a small, flat automatic from under Ping’s shirt, and holds it out. Chu looks at it but makes no move to take it.
“Think fast,” Rafferty says. He flicks the safety and drops the gun to the asphalt. It lands with a clatter and a bounce. Chu takes a quick step back-a hop, really-and when his eyes come back, the grandfather is gone and there is murder in them.
“Don’t worry,” Rafferty says. “Nobody saw you jump except me. And old Ping here. Not much loss of face there.” He turns to go and says, over his shoulder, “And if you’re worried about Ping, you can always kill him later.”
When they’re ten or eleven yards from Chu, Rafferty says, “Have you thought about that? About him killing you later?”
“Shut up,” Ping says, and then gasps. His tongue probes the tooth again.
“There must be something about me. Everybody tells me to shut up. How’d you break that tooth?”
No answer.
“Hard to break a front tooth like that. Usually it’s a molar. Or did somebody else break it?”
Ping just slogs through the rain, but he brings a hand up to cover his mouth.
“You should have it looked at.”
“I know.”
“Of course, you may not need to get it looked at. You know how the triads cure a toothache? They amputate the head.”
“She’s just like you,” Ping says. “Your daughter.”
Rafferty looks at him quickly but can’t find his voice to speak.
“Those pajamas,” Ping says. He squints and puts the hand back over his mouth. “They’ve got bunnies all over them, and she acts like they’re a suit of fucking armor. She even told him off. He went out and got her a milk shake or something, and she laid into him because it had melted.”
The full weight of what he’s doing-what he’s trying to do-is suddenly pushing at Rafferty from all sides. He feels like a man walking the bottom of the ocean. The air and the darkness press in on him. His lungs are an inch deep. “Here we are,” he says as they turn the corner.
Leung is standing by the car. He shades his eyes against the rain, sees Ping, and raises a hand, palm up, meaning, What the fuck? Rafferty says, “Get everybody out. Open the trunk. This is a paranoia check.”
In a few moments, the car is empty. Fon and Lek, in bra and panties, huddle against the rain, which is hard enough to sting their bare skin. Ming Li and Leung face the car, their hands folded on their heads, while Pradya holds his gun-loaded now, Rafferty remembers-steady on Frank. Ping motions Rafferty to the trunk, where the suitcase and Chu’s wooden box are stored. “Open them,” he says.
“The suitcase,” Rafferty says. “I don’t know if I can close it again.”
“Your problem, not mine.”
“Fine. Be a hard-ass.” He lifts the suitcase’s latch, and the oiled lid pops up five or six inches as Rafferty holds his breath. Very carefully, he opens it the rest of the way and watches with some satisfaction as Ping’s involuntary gasp sends him into a spasm of pain. Then Rafferty closes the suitcase gently and lifts the lid of the wooden box to display the rubies. “Okay?”
“Okay.” The car sags suddenly as Fon and Lek scramble into it, ducking the rain. Ping pulls out his cell and dials. Chu takes his time picking it up. “It’s fine,” Ping says at last. “They’ve got everything, and no one is here who shouldn’t be.” The volume of the rain increases, and Ping says, “What?” He presses a palm against his free ear, screwing up his face to hear. “No. No weapons. Nothing obvious anyway.” He listens for a moment and then tilts his chin at Pradya and hands him the phone.
Rafferty steps under the overhang of the warehouse roof and watches the sheet of water sliding over its edge. He is fighting for air.
“No problem,” Pradya says into the phone. “Sure, sure he’s here.” He holds the phone out to Frank. “He wants to talk to you.”
Frank snatches the phone as though he were planning to bite it in half. He puts his mouth to it and says, “I choose the people I talk to,” and then shuts the phone and hands it back to the fat cop. “And fuck him,” he adds.