Rafferty reaches down and takes Chu’s gun and pats him for another. Chu hisses at him but doesn’t move. Once he’s satisfied that Chu has nothing else, Rafferty turns to see one of Chu’s men flat on the ground, arms and legs splayed, and the other with his hands in the air. Pradya, Sriyat, and Leung all hold guns. Frank has Ming Li in his arms. Rose is half carrying Noi back to the car, with an over-the-shoulder look at Miaow.
Rafferty tosses Chu’s gun a few yards away and pulls the Ziploc bag from his pocket. He removes the cell phone and pushes the “dial” button. It is answered on the first ring. He says, “Between Warehouses One and Two. Come now.” He closes the phone, kicks Chu once, hard, in the area of the kidneys, just by way of letting off steam, and waves at Ping to bring Miaow. After an evaluative moment, Ping rolls off her, and Miaow gets up, her pink pajamas wet and filthy, and extends a hand to help Ping up. Ping stares at the hand for a second and then gives her an enormous broken-tooth grin, followed by an agonized grab at his mouth with his free hand. Miaow pats his arm and leads him, hand in hand, to Rafferty.
“This is Ping,” she says. “I told him he wouldn’t shoot us.”
Rafferty picks Miaow up and hugs her so tightly she grunts. Her arms circle his neck. She says, “Is your father all right?”
“He’s fine.” He kisses the part in her hair, feeling like his heart will explode.
“That’s good,” Miaow says, pulling away. She hates being kissed on the head. She takes a sniff at herself, makes a face, and says, “I want a shower.”
“If you want it,” he says, putting her down, “you’ve got it.” He turns to Ping. “Can you take her to the car?”
“I don’t know,” Ping says. “Miaow, can I take you to the car?”
“You’re silly,” Miaow says. She gives him her hand. As they walk away, Rafferty hears her say, “Does your tooth still hurt?”
Chu slowly rolls over until he is on his back. He is cradling his broken arm at the elbow. He says, “You’re dead. All of you.”
“Promises, promises.” Cones of light sweep the alleyway, silhouetting Miaow and Ping in gold, and then the car is in sight. “You’ve got a full schedule for a while.”
“You idiot,” Chu says. “I’ll be out in a week. There’s nowhere in the world you can hide. And this time I’ll make you watch people die.”
The car slows to a halt a few feet away. Rafferty says, “That thing you said about how there’s a valuable lesson in learning you don’t run the world? I hope you meant it, because you’re about to take a quantum leap in personal growth.”
The car doors shut, and Elson stands over them. “Colonel Chu,” he says, “I’m Richard Elson, United States Secret Service, and this is Lieutenant Kosit of the Bangkok Municipal Police. We’re jointly taking you into custody on behalf of the Thai authorities and the government of the United States of America, on charges of counterfeiting, racketeering, kidnapping, and the murder of an American intelligence officer.” Chu’s mouth works, but nothing comes out. “Would you mind cuffing him, Lieutenant Kosit?”
“He’s got a broken arm,” Rafferty says.
“That’s a terrible shame,” Kosit says, grabbing it. Chu emits a high-pitched shriek as Kosit twists the arm behind him and fastens the cuffs.
“Jesus,” Elson says, looking around. “We’ve got to pick up this money.”
Kosit is still bent over Chu, and Rafferty tugs his sleeve. “Get some cops into Arthit’s room,” he says. He nudges Chu with the tip of his shoe. “This murderous old shit has sent some guys after him. And choose your men wisely, because the thugs he sent are cops.”
Kosit gives Chu a look that does not suggest that the coming interrogation will be gentle. Then he moves a few feet away and pulls out his cell phone.
Elson shoves a hand under Rafferty’s nose. There are eight or nine red stones in his palm, and his brow is wrinkled. “What the hell are these?”
“They’re rubies, and they’re all over the place,” Rafferty says. “And just to keep things straight, they’re not counterfeit and they belong to my father.”
For a second, Elson is wearing his old face. “How does your father come to have a bucket of rubies?”
“Same as Peachy,” Rafferty says. “He won them in a horse race.”
44
In the middle of the wettest, warmest tangle of arms, legs, and hearts of his entire life, Rafferty is barely aware of the torrent of Thai coming from Miaow, perhaps two hundred
words a minute, far too fast for him to catch more than a phrase or a name or two: Ping, Rose, milk shake, tooth, gun. All he can do is hold on, Rose on his right and Miaow on his left, but now they’re a circle, and so Miaow is, as always, in the middle. Where she needs to be.
The circle opens to absorb Fon and Lek, both of them crying like children, and closes again. With the rain hammering down, the five of them squeeze together even more tightly, the two half-naked women no longer feeling the cold, and then the arms open a second time, and there is someone there who feels new, someone who smells new to Rafferty’s heightened senses, and they wrap themselves around Ming Li. The sky cracks, a fork of lightning fingering its way down, followed by a sound like someone crumpling iron.
With the thunder, Poke feels Rose straighten, remove her arm from his shoulder, and pull away. He looks at her. With her other arm still around Miaow, she is gazing beyond him. Rafferty turns his head to see Frank. His father stands sideways to the group, not even sheltering from the rain. He faces back down the alley between the warehouses, where it all happened.
Something warm fills Rafferty’s chest, and suddenly there are words in his mouth. And then he looks again at his father’s profile, so familiar and so strange, a face he had thought was permanently turned away, and he can’t say them. He swallows, so hard it feels as though he is forcing the words down.
Rose says, “Mr. Rafferty?”
Frank turns, and Rose raises the arm that had been around Rafferty, inviting him in. Frank stands there, not moving, until Rafferty steps aside, closer to Fon, expanding the space between him and Rose. Rafferty lifts his arm exactly as Rose has, the space between them wide and welcoming, and he hears something catch and break in Ming Li’s throat. Slowly, like a man approaching a door he thinks will be locked, Frank joins the circle. It closes around him.
The car is even more crowded on the way out: Fon sits in Lek’s lap and Ming Li in Frank’s. Miaow has spread herself across both Rafferty’s and Rose’s laps, dead weight against them. She fell asleep the moment the car door slammed shut.
Leung is at the wheel. Noi is slumped against the front passenger door, next to Frank. Rafferty can hear her breath whistling in her throat.
With a last look back, Leung puts the car in gear and heads for the gates.
The silence in the car is a kind of warmth, a comforting insulation that makes the events of the last hour seem very distant, perhaps not even real. What’s real now is a car jammed with people, bunched up against each other as though by choice, the steam of breath on window glass, the walls of the warehouses as they slide by in the headlights.
Frank suddenly sits upright and looks back, and Rafferty cranes his neck around, expecting the nightmare to reemerge: men with guns, Chu free somehow, looming out of the darkness with his slicker flapping around him, but he sees nothing. And then Frank begins to laugh.
“What?” Ming Li asks. “What is it?”
“Nothing important,” Frank says, and then he laughs again. “I forgot my rubies.”