Timothy Hallinan - A Nail Through the Heart

Arthit says, "Give me the phone."

Rafferty hands it over with gratitude. Clarissa has kept her promise to call to say good-bye, and he has been unable to think of a single thing to tell her.

"I need to talk to you about your uncle," Arthit says after identifying himself. He does not look at Rafferty. He is speaking his best English, British-clipped and stiff as a pig's bristle. He wears a polo shirt that Claus Ulrich's catalog would probably call "color-free" and a new pair of plaid trousers, bright enough to light a ballroom.

Rafferty can hear a question on Clarissa's end, and Arthit says, "He was working for us. He was a very valuable asset."

Privately Rafferty thinks Arthit has been reading too much John le Carre, but he leans back on the slashed couch and keeps his opinion to himself. An hour with a household cleanser that stank of ammonia has deleted the smear of eggs from the wall, and a throw rug covers the wet spot from which he'd scrubbed Madame Wing's blood. He'd gotten up from the mutilated bed around four in the morning, the third time he'd dreamed about killing her, and moved the rug from the kitchen.

That leaves only the rest of the apartment to clean up. Sitting uselessly on the floor, he begins to gather the couch's stuffing.

"As you probably know, the commercial abuse of women in Asia is a serious problem, a failure of international policy. Cultural issues enter into it as well, the relative value to Asian society of men and women." Arthit's eyes are closed. He seems intentionally to be choosing the driest language available without actually resorting to footnotes, but Rafferty gives it a second thought and decides it's probably brilliant. Anything more personal would not be half so convincing.

"So for us to have someone who was European, or at least Australian, who was mobile, who could cross borders…" He waits again, as Clarissa talks. Rafferty can't make out the words, but her voice is pitched high.

"Of course," Arthit says. "He was invaluable. Once he'd established his cover, buying all that awful pornography, he could position himself as a serious customer. He could gain their trust, something none of us could have hoped to do.

"We made arrests," Arthit says. He is sitting sideways on the ravaged sofa, gazing at the spot above it where the egg smear used to be. "I can say without hesitation that one Chinese gang has been put completely out of business, at least indirectly because of your Uncle Claus." This is not only a clincher, Rafferty thinks; it has the added merit of being true. In a way.

"Yes, my dear," Arthit says, his eyes flicking to Rafferty. "He was a hero, of sorts. And what happened to him-well, it probably didn't happen in Thailand. We think he was most likely in Laos when they got to him. We may never know exactly."

He listens again. "It's my pleasure," he says. "No one wants to think badly of someone we love after they're gone. There's no way for them to explain." His eyes find Rafferty again, and he shrugs. "Yes, yes. So please don't be too harsh on us. And have a good flight." He hangs up.

The two of them sit in silence for a moment, Rafferty with both hands full of cottony stuffing. Arthit looks out through the balcony window at the darkening sky, slowly going a sullen lead gray. "I guess the sun has called it a day."

"And who has a better right?" Rafferty asks, and immediately regrets his tone. He jams the stuffing into one of the slits in the couch, picks up some more, and drops it again, trying to exhale several liters of mixed emotions. "Thank you, Arthit."

Arthit pats his belly. "You said something about dinner."

"I did, didn't I?" Rafferty gets up stiffly, feeling battered and drained and older than he intends to be at death. "I thought we'd cook it out on the balcony."

"Probably a good idea, since I'd hate to think of you anywhere near a stove. You'd probably end up with your head in the oven. What's on the menu?"

"Man food," Rafferty says with a relish he does not feel. "Steaks."

"With what?"

"What do you mean, with what? They're big steaks."

"Where are Miaow and Rose?"

"At Rose's. Being girls together. And staying out of Superman's way." He doesn't add that Rose left to intercept Miaow after the shooting without speaking to him. It seems to take him fifteen minutes to get to the kitchen. He opens the refrigerator and pulls out the steaks, two of Foodland's biggest, cut specially for the occasion. "How do you want yours?"

"Just breathe on it a couple of times," Arthit says, hitching his blinding trousers by way of preparing to rise. "I'll bet there's a beer somewhere."

"Heineken. Just for you."

"It is manifestly a perfect world," Arthit says.

"The victims were guilty," Rafferty says. "And the murderers were innocent."

Arthit drains his fourth green bottle. "I hate when that happens."

They are sitting on folding chairs on the balcony, looking out over the Bangkok night. Most of Rafferty's steak is still on the plate, sheened over with cold fat. The coals, coated with powdery ash now, are settling into the hibachi. Rafferty reaches over with the barbecue fork and pokes them, producing a small explosion of sparks. He leaves the tines of the fork buried in the pile of coals, as he used to do when he was a child in California, trying to heat the tines until they glow.

"And the boy?" Arthit asks.

"Gone. But he said he'd be back, to get Miaow."

"Then you'll have another chance with him, won't you?" He glances over at Rafferty, assessing the damage to his face. "The apartment looks terrible," he says.

"Really? I had it redone just for tonight."

"You look terrible, too."

"I ran into a door."

"That's a lot of damage for-"

"It was a revolving door."

"If it's any comfort, there are a couple of police generals who look worse," Arthit says, ignoring Rafferty's evasion. "Since Madame Wing's body was pulled from the river, they look like someone just cut their pay in half, which is probably accurate. Confusing world, isn't it? Even someone as wretched as she was will be missed."

"Confusing doesn't begin to describe it. It's like learning that all the maps were just made up at random, that they don't correspond to anything. Directions are a polite fiction. There's no such thing as north. Did you know, Arthit, that we 'orient' maps to the north because early mapmakers arbitrarily put Asia at the top of their maps? We've been going in the wrong direction for centuries. For all we know, that goddamned wave wanted to hit California."

"I've always thought a sense of direction was overrated," Arthit says, "since everything's pretty much the same everywhere."

"Well, I thought I had one. Take Madame Wing. I oriented myself toward her for a time because that's where I thought Doughnut was. Typical Bangkok two-step: Start out in one direction, sidestep, and suddenly you don't know who you're dancing with."

Arthit slides his eyes over at Rafferty and then out at the black Bangkok sky. A thin, high layer of clouds obscures the stars, making heaven as blank and featureless as a faulty memory, or the proverbial clean slate. The night is hot and still. "That thing about the Orient. Where'd you learn that?"

"A book."

"Gosh. Reading a lot lately?"

"One corker after another." Rafferty straightens his legs in front of him, looking down at his bare feet, almost the only unmarked parts of his body. "One of the nice things about books," he says, "is that they have endings."

Arthit says, "In case no one has told you, Poke, life has an ending."

"A kid who's vanished back to the street," Rafferty says. "A very nice murderer in jail. A missing Australian who will apparently remain missing throughout the rest of this geological age, whatever they've named it. His murderer missing. Not exactly a tidy resolution."