Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller полностью

“The wife’s better than Eve. And she’s yours if you want her.” The man from the car slips one of the earphones off and tucks it behind his ear. “Okay, you got the story? The kid was playing with the gun, no damage done except the holes in the cabinet and the floor. The cops went through the place, probably looking in closets and under beds to make sure nobody was dead, and everybody said good night, and they left. I leave anything important out?”

“No.”

“I mean, if himself decides to listen to the tape. Have I left anything out?”

“No. That’s all of it.”

“When they go to bed, you rewind the tape and go through it again. Just to make sure.”

The two of them listen for a few minutes. The man from the car drains his drink. Then he asks, “Why’d you have to leave the party early?”

“Just business,” Captain Teeth says. “Listen. They’re going to bed.” He reaches over to the other man’s glass and loops a finger through the hole in the center of one of the ice cubes. He pulls the cube out and drops it into his mouth. Around the cube he says, “You really think I can have her?”

A voice behind them says, “It’ll be a waste if you don’t.” They turn to see the man in the photographs on the desk, wearing a dark blue silk robe. “Because no one else ever will.”

The men at the console leap to their feet. The man in the robe goes to the desk, opens the top drawer, and pulls out a pack of cigarettes and shakes one loose. “Kai,” he says to Captain Teeth. He picks up a gold lighter and flicks it. “Have you told Ren here what you did earlier this evening, after you deserted the party?” He regards the two of them over the flame.

“No,” Kai says.

“Didn’t tell him how you hurt your thumb?” The man in the robe is in the darker half of the office, away from the desk lamps on the console, and the flame of the lighter brings his face out of the gloom and plants bright pinpricks in the center of his eyes. “Nothing?”

“No, sir.”

“How sensitive of you not to embarrass him,” the man in the robe says. “Then I’ll tell him. What Kai did tonight,” he says, his eyes on Ren, “was pick up the shit you dropped.”

Ren licks his lips and says, “Excuse me?”

“The elevator,” says the man in the robe. He lets the lighter go out, throwing his face back into darkness. His voice is soft, but the edges are rough enough to remove skin. “You made three mistakes, didn’t you?”

“Three?” Ren asks. He puts a steadying hand on the console.

“One of them was just stupid. Taking the farang up in that elevator. Stupid, but understandable. You could have used the service elevator, but that one was right there, wasn’t it? Right there in the garage.”

“Yes, sir,” Ren says, around a swallow.

“So you saved a few steps. You used it. And it told the farang what floor we were on. And then you made a more serious mistake.” He flicks the lighter again, puts the cigarette in his mouth, touches the flame to its tip, and takes a drag that brings the coal to life. Then he exhales a stream of smoke and flips the cigarette straight at Ren. It strikes Ren in the center of the chest, and he drops to his knees as though he’s been shot, although what he’s doing is trying frantically to retrieve the cigarette before it scorches the carpet. He scrambles after it and grasps it between thumb and forefinger. When he knows he won’t drop it, he starts to rise, but the man in the blue robe says, “Stay there.”

Ren freezes in a crouch. His legs are bent at acute angles, and he is balanced on the balls of his feet.

“Is that position comfortable?” the man in the blue robe asks.

“Uh, no, sir.”

“Well, let’s see how comfortable it is in, say, two hours.” He comes out from behind the desk and stands over Ren. Then he draws back his right hand and slaps the crouching man hard enough to snap his head around and make him put his free hand down to keep from toppling over.

“I didn’t say you could use your hands,” says the man in the blue robe.

“Sorry, sir,” Ren says. The left side of his face is flaming. His legs have begun to tremble from the strain.

“Put your hands on your knees.” Ren does as he’s told. The cigarette in his left sends up a lazy filigree of smoke. The man in the blue robe slaps him again and then again, and when Ren puts a hand down, the man in the robe plants a slippered foot on it and grinds it into the carpet with the edge of the heel. “What was your second mistake?”

“I told him…I told him not to tell you.”

“You didn’t want me to be angry at you,” says the man in the blue robe. “You didn’t want me to-what? Speak harshly to you? Raise my voice? Shake my finger at you? So, since you didn’t want to endure that, since you were afraid of being shouted at, I didn’t know the truth, that Rafferty had information that could bring him back to us. And then you made your third mistake. The one that’s almost impossible to forgive.”

“Sir?” Ren’s face is running with sweat, partially from the strain of maintaining the position, but mostly from fear.