“You’re not?” he demands. “Okay, you’re not on the streets now. But why pretend to be something you aren’t?”
“I don’t know what-”
“Have you told anybody at your school about it?” He squeezes the word “school” as though he’s trying to juice it. “Does anyone know you were on the street? If I showed up, would you introduce me to your friends?”
“But…” Miaow says, “but they’re…those kids, they’re-”
“Leave her alone,” Da says.
“No,” Miaow snaps, just barely not stamping her foot. “Don’t you tell him not to…uhh, not to talk to me the way he…um, the way he wants to, to talk to…” And then she’s crying, and she turns to Rose and wraps her arms around her mother and buries her head against Rose’s blouse.
“Well,” Rose says, looking at Boo. Miaow’s shoulders are shaking, but she’s absolutely silent.
Da says, “That was
“She has a different life now,” Rose says to Boo.
Boo says, “Obviously,” but he doesn’t meet her eyes.
Rose’s phone rings.
She looks at the number on the display but doesn’t recognize it. She thinks,
Da rubs her arms as though she’s cold and says, “Someone is watching us.”
CAPTAIN TEETH SAYS, “She answered. She’s there.”
Ren doesn’t even look at him. “Where?”
“Wherever the phone is.”
“That’s helpful,” Ren says. He is back behind the big desk, even though he knows that Ton could walk in at any moment.
“It’s something,” Captain Teeth says. “She probably thinks the phone is safe unless she uses it. She doesn’t know it’s searching for a tower all the time. I wanted to make sure she hadn’t just left it somewhere to lead us in the wrong direction.”
“Goody,” Ren says acidly. “You may get your chance with her yet.”
“Fine,” Captain Teeth snaps. “You worry about what’s going to happen to us if the man gets everything he wants. I’ll worry about what happens to us if he doesn’t. Maybe we can’t find Rafferty, but we know how to find the woman, once the man calls whoever it is at the cell-phone company. Which probably means we know where to find the kid, too.”
Ren says, “We know too much.”
Captain Teeth says, “So figure out how to live through it.”
THE ROOM SMELLS of carpet that was at some point wet for a very long time. The carpet is wall-to-wall and well worn, obviously installed during an optimistic interlude in the past when someone thought the hotel would be a success. Shag of a long-unfashionable length, dyed a color that has no counterpart in nature, it curls slightly at the corners as though something were trying to claw its way out.
If this is the last act of my life, Rafferty thinks, I’d rather it didn’t begin on a carpet like this one.
Kosit sits, legs dangling, on top of the cheap, chipped, four-drawer bureau in front of the mirror, and Arthit is up on one elbow on the bed nearer the door. The bag of money is at the foot of Arthit’s bed, tipped on one side to spill bundles of currency across the bedspread. Rafferty is standing inside the bathroom door, just to get off the carpet. The toilet is running behind him. It has been running since they got there.
Kosit’s patrolman accomplice, the man who stuck the gun in the back of Rafferty’s neck, has gone back to the station to dig out some pictures.
“I’m not a cop now,” Arthit says.
Arthit’s face is puffy and bloated, especially beneath the eyes. For the first time since Rafferty met him, his friend is unshaven, despite the new and unwrapped razor on the bureau where Kosit sits, and the stubble on his jaw is dusted with white. The hair on one side of his head sweeps forward, probably from having been slept on.
“Of course you are,” Kosit says. “We can straighten this out.”
Arthit waves the thought away. “If I want to.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Kosit says. “Let Thanom win. Give him what he wants. That’ll show him.”
“Of course you want to be a cop,” Rafferty says.
