Miaow says, "Why not?"
Rose gives Rafferty a disapproving glance. "You'll learn the answer to that question in a minute."
Rafferty pours a splash into Miaow's glass.
Miaow says, "Up to his belly button."
"Taste it first," Rafferty says, and hands it to her. He and Rose pick up their own glasses, and the three of them, in response to some psychically shared impulse, hoist and drink at the same time.
Miaow says, "Eeeeeewwwwww." Her face is so twisted it looks like it's being wrung out.
"It doesn't get better," Rose says.
Miaow lifts the glass again and sniffs, then quickly puts it down. She scrapes her tongue against her top teeth, trying to get rid of the taste. Then she says, "I'm still scared."
"He's not going to find this place tonight," Rafferty says. "And tomorrow we'll start making it harder for him to find it at all. But tonight we're okay. We'll wake up early tomorrow and get to work."
"And I'll tell you about it then," Rose says. "In daylight."
"Anybody want more?" Rafferty has picked up the bottle. When no one answers, he grabs his glass in his other hand and goes into the kitchen. He turns from the sink to see Miaow standing behind him, holding the other two glasses. He takes them from her and puts them into the sink, and she wraps her arms around his waist and presses the side of her head against his side. He looks down at the raggedy-yellow crop of hair. Sure enough, he can see her part.
"We're okay," he says. "Go to bed, and everything will be fine."
Miaow says, "I want to sleep with you and Rose."
"Fine," Rafferty says, hoping she can't hear his heartbeat double in fury. "We've got lots of room. But don't worry. He won't find us." IT'S A SHARP smell, one he knows he should recognize, but he's functionally impaired until the coffee electrifies his nervous system, and he's still muzzy from the evening's whiskey. The flat, dead reek of Rose's cigarettes takes the edge off the smell and makes it an irritant, like a word he's used a million times and suddenly can't remember. So he stands in the kitchen, his bare shoulder against the cool refrigerator door, and watches the coffee drip.
He's halfway through the first cup when he thinks he knows what the smell is. At the same moment he hears a knocking at the front door.
He goes quickly into the bedroom and opens the sliding door in the headboard of the bed. He'd quietly unlocked the safe last night, while Rose was in the bathroom and Miaow was changing for bed, and the Glock is unwrapped and waiting for him. There's no school today, and Rose and Miaow are both asleep, Rose's arm thrown over the child's shoulders. He puts his coffee on the bedside table, transfers the gun to his left hand so it'll be out of sight behind the door, throws Rose's towel over his shoulders, and goes shirtless into the living room. He tries the peephole in the door, but it's blocked, so he racks a shell into the gun's chamber and opens the door a crack with his foot against it. The smell becomes a blunt-force object, almost overwhelming.
Mrs. Pongsiri stands there, wrapped in a silk kimono, holding a cup of what smells like hot cinnamon. She apparently slept in her bar makeup, and it's smeared on the side of her face that she'd sunk into the pillow. It makes Rafferty feel like he's looking at her through a rippled window.
"Mr. Rafferty," Mrs. Pongsiri says in English, "do you know about this?"
"About…?"
"This." Mrs. Pongsiri indicates the door with a scarlet-tipped hand in a vertical sweeping gesture, top to bottom, bottom to top.
Rafferty pulls the door toward him and freezes when it's about a third of the way open.
A thick X runs from corner to corner in a deep blood red. Taped over the peephole is a small, uneven square of cardboard, no more than half an inch to a side, clipped with scissors from something larger. Printed on it in dark gray is the claw of a bird of prey.
A raptor.
Chapter 4
"He's having fun," Rose says, giving the word a bitter twist. "Terrifying people, threatening them. Playing with them. This is his idea of a joke."
It's a few minutes after 10:00 A.M., and the day is well into its long, slow sizzle. The living room is bright enough to make Rafferty, whiskey-sensitive, wish he were wearing dark glasses. Rose is curled on the couch, brown knees drawn up protectively, wearing a man's T-shirt, size quadruple-X, with a picture of Wile E. Coyote on it, above a pair of cutoff jeans. Circles are thumb-smudged beneath her eyes. Miaow, who's barely spoken all morning, sits perched on the edge of the chair at Rafferty's desk, decked out in one of her usual immaculate weekend outfits: pressed lemon-yellow jeans and a severely white T-shirt, unsullied by anything as vulgar as a design. Rafferty can't see himself, and he has no idea what he's wearing.
Sunday or not, Arthit is in uniform. For the past eight months, he's been putting in six- and sometimes seven-day weeks. His face looks crumpled. He's lost at least six kilos, and the lines on his forehead and around his eyes and mouth have deepened. He could probably slip four fingers inside the buttoned collar of his shirt.
For the first time since they met, Rafferty thinks, his friend looks old.
"Howard Horner," Arthit says. "And you think he's military."
Rafferty looks to Rose, but she says nothing, so he says, "Has to be."
"He never talked about it," Rose finally says. "He said he was in business, but he looked like a soldier."
Arthit says, "Do you actually know whether that's his name? Did you ever see anything with his name on it? A passport, driver's license, anything?"
"No," Rose says. "But that was his name. His cell phone rang all the time, and he answered it, 'Horner.' Not hello or anything, just Horner. Like he was the only one in the world."
"That's all?"
"No," she says, after a moment. "They called him Mr. Horner at his hotel." She plucks the bottom of the T-shirt and looks down at Wile E. Coyote. "At all the hotels."
"Need a passport to check in to a hotel," Rafferty says. There's a faint pulse beating at his right temple. "So he's got a passport that says 'Horner' anyway."
"And he came and went, you said." Arthit is on the hassock with his notebook positioned in front of him on the glass-topped table. He's made half a page of notes.
"He'd usually stay a month or so," Rose says. "Then he'd be gone for a while and come back."
"How long between visits?"
"Maybe three months, maybe more." She squints into the past. "Maybe less. It's hard to say. I hadn't been in Bangkok long. Everything was new to me. Some weeks felt like months, some months felt like days. I was fighting for my life in the bar, trying to figure out how to tell friends from enemies, trying to get over being terrified all the time. I wasn't keeping track of anything, just trying to get through the nights."
"Don't think about that one for a minute," Arthit says. "Maybe it'll come. When did you first see him?"
Rose rubs her upper arms as though she's cold, although the living-room temperature is into the eighties. "A few weeks after I got here. I know that because it was near my birthday. I got here in July, and my birthday is in September."
"That's how many years ago?"
"Thirteen." She glances at Rafferty. "No. Fourteen. I've been with Poke five years."
"So he came into the bar," Arthit prompts.
"I don't want to talk about that. I mean, I do, but I need to explain things to Poke and Miaow, not just answer questions like this."
"Fine," Arthit says. "Can you remember anything he said about himself? What he did, where he went when he left here, anything like that?"
"He told me he came from England."
"He's American," Rafferty and Miaow correct her, almost in unison.
Rose straightens, looking from one of them to the other. "I know," she says. "I didn't know then that there was a part of America called England."