Timothy Hallinan - The Fear Artist

Since someone has to say something, he toasts Pim with his cup and says, “This is great coffee.”

“You’ve met Anna before, I think,” Arthit said. “At the temple. For Noi’s …”

“I remember,” Rafferty says, just to break in on Arthit’s pause.

“She and Noi grew up together,” Arthit says. “Now, once in a while, she reads lips for the police when there’s video evidence that doesn’t have sound or where the voices aren’t audible.”

“Ahh,” Rafferty says. “The footage that didn’t make the news.”

“You already know about this?” Arthit asks. “That there’s official interest, I mean?” Anna watches Arthit’s lips and then turns to Rafferty for his answer.

“They hauled me in last night, about nine o’clock.”

“Who?”

“A Major Shen.”

“Not a Major Shen,” Arthit says astringently. “The one and only Major Shen.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know him personally, but my impression is that he’s the worst possible news.”

“I’ve got worse,” Rafferty says. “He grilled me in a crappy little room with one of those mirrors in it, and on the other side of the mirror were a couple of guys from my own country-you know, the land of the free. One of them was our pal Elson.”

Anna nods and holds up her free hand. With the other she’s writing on a small pad. She tears off a sheet and hands it to Arthit.

“She says that makes sense. Shen works with the Americans.”

“On what?” Rafferty asks Anna, who’s writing again.

“The situation in the south,” Arthit reads from her pad.

“Sure,” Rafferty says. “He was all over me about Indonesia and the Philippines, like I was some sort of courier for militant Islam.”

Arthit is nodding before Rafferty finishes speaking. “It’s just a matter of time before one of the big jihadists is caught here, either down south or in Bangkok,” Arthit says. “We’ve got a big Arab population in Bangkok and a lot of native Muslim discontent down there.”

“Who’s Shen with? I didn’t recognize the uniform.”

“It hasn’t been worn in public much. It’s a little operatic if you ask me. Listen, I know him for only one reason, and that’s because he was given permission to take pretty much anyone he wanted from any department he wanted. And he chose knuckle-draggers, the kind of guys you’d take into the street if you thought you might have to fire into a crowd.”

Anna is writing again, but this time she holds the pad up for everyone to see. It says, in English, Who was the other one?

Rafferty says, “You mean, with-”

“With Elson,” Arthit says. Anna nods and pulls from the pad the page she’d begun to write on. She folds it neatly in precise halves and puts it on the coffee table.

“Never saw him before,” Rafferty says. “Short, fat, redheaded, red-faced. High blood pressure and a short fuse, great combination. Maybe sixty-five, maybe seventy. Had what would have been a handlebar mustache if it had been on his upper lip instead of coming out of his nose. Dressed like a budget tourist.”

Arthit shakes his head. “No idea.”

Anna is writing again, and they all wait. Even Pim is watching her with half-concealed curiosity. When Anna holds the pad up, it says, They wanted to know what the man in the street said to you?

“Yes. Could you see what it was?”

She shakes her head. No plosives , she writes. No fricatives. No rounded vowels. He was in profile .

“A plosive is like a b or a p ,” Arthit says, with the air of someone parading new knowledge. “A fricative is an f or a v . They’re easy to see.”

“And a rounded vowel,” Rafferty says, “is a rounded vowel.” He thinks for a moment. “No m ’s either. How about that?”

Impossible to read in profile , Anna writes.

“Major Shen was … upset with her,” Arthit says. “He swore at her, accused her of lying.” Rafferty is surprised at the anger behind those words, and Pim listens with her mouth open. Anna puts a hand on Arthit’s wrist as though to stop him, but he’s too steamed to slow down. “Even though he knows her, she said he treated her like a … like trash off the street.”

Anna is writing. She holds up the pad, and it reads Very bad man .

“What do you mean, he knows you?”

“When they were kids,” Arthit says. “They’re both from respectable families without much money, people who all pretty much know each other. Old families, but not powerful.” Anna nods. “It’s a relatively small circle, all living in Bangkok, all going to the same schools. She knew him when they were ten or eleven. Hell, Noi probably knew him.”

Anna has been writing, and they wait until she finishes. She holds up the pad. Bad even then. He hurt weak kids. He stole things .

“He’s lived in America,” Rafferty says, and waits as she writes.

Military school , Anna’s upraised pad says.

“He lived there long enough to get dual citizenship,” Arthit says. “That’s part of his legend, the only Thai cop with dual citizenship.” He shakes imaginary water from his fingers as though to say, Big deal . “People say he got recruited by the American spooks, and then a couple of years ago he was back here again, sent by the U.S. to help us deal with the problems in the south, although we all know what that really means. It means they want a listening post and an errand boy in the department.”

“He did go all glimmery about my potential Muslim connections.”

“Sure he did,” Arthit says. “For Shen’s department ‘Muslims’ is the answer to every question. Probably looks for an imam under his bed every night.”

“Well,” Rafferty says, “ Somebody killed about five thousand people down south.”

“I’m not saying the problem isn’t real. What I’m saying is that we’re using bad people to fight bad people, and you do not want to be in the middle of that.”

“Yeah, well, that’s where I think I am.”

Anna is pointing at her pad again. It says, What did you tell them?

He hesitates for a moment and sees that she registers the hesitation. “I told them he said ‘Helena.’ ” He remouths it when he sees Anna squinting at him. “As in the city in Montana. And I said couldn’t remember the other thing he said to me, which was a woman’s name.”

“Not smart,” Arthit says.

Rafferty allows his irritation to show. “Well, I couldn’t remember it. But when I woke up this morning, I had it loud and clear. So I guess the question is whether I should call Major Shen and tell him what it is.”

“American name?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s think about it,” Arthit says. “About your calling Major Shen. While we try to figure out what’s going on.”

“Why? Why not just tell him?”

Arthit holds up three fingers, Thai style, beginning with the middle finger and ending with the pinkie. “Three reasons. First, Shen is paranoid enough to believe that you were lying last night-that you actually knew it all along and stalled so you could warn people or clean things up or some other nonsense. Second, you have no idea why the man on the street told you that name-and no, I don’t want to know what the name is, and I certainly don’t want Anna to know. For all you know, it leads to a massive booby trap.” He stops and stares at the floor as though he’s just heard what he said.

“And third?”

“Third, Shen’s people have a lot on their plate right now. They haven’t got time for irrelevancies. Maybe if you stay off their radar, just live a normal life, they’ll forget about you. Maybe.”