“So,” Rafferty says, “at one point he’s a pimp with some massage parlors, and now he owns the rights to trademarks, he’s got factories, he’s a possible political force. He’s somebody that people like you have to put up with. How did he make the jump? What’s missing?”
Porthip passes a hand over his brow and closes his eyes. He keeps them closed so long that Rafferty is on the verge of asking whether the man is all right. When the eyes open, they are pointed at the ceiling and the muscles surrounding them are tightly bunched, the left eye still twitching. The man breathes raggedly, catches the breath in his throat, and then lets it out in a rush. He breathes deeply two or three times, and only then does he look back down at Rafferty.
“He owned…somebody’s soul,” Porthip says. The four words require two breaths. He blots perspiration from his upper lip. “He knew something about somebody big. Maybe he did something to put that person hopelessly in debt. Whoever it was, he paid it back by putting up millions and millions. He opened doors. And he kept quiet about it. Makes you think there were only two possible options: give Pan everything he wanted or kill him, and for some reason Pan couldn’t be killed. So the little whorehouse owner disappears, and six months later we’ve got the tycoon on our hands.”
“And even someone like you doesn’t know who it is.”
Porthip swivels his chair ninety degrees so he is looking out the window at the brightness of the new day, and at the sight the muscles of his face soften. Something about the reaction strikes Rafferty as almost infinitely sad. For a moment he thinks Porthip will drop the shield that’s been in place throughout the conversation, but what Porthip says is, “Nobody knows. Nobody’s talked.” He turns back to face Rafferty, the mask of pain tightly in place. “And don’t forget, we’re talking about years ago. Whoever it was, he could be dead by now.”
RAFFERTY DOESN’T EVEN have to look at the yellow sheet to punch in the number. It rings once, and then it is picked up, but the person at the other end doesn’t say anything.
“This is stupid,” Rafferty says. “If you don’t talk, how am I supposed to know I’ve got the right number? You want me to blab about all this when I don’t even know who’s on the line?”
“Jutht a minute,” says the man on the other end, a voice Rafferty recognizes from the car that sped him away from Miaow’s school. But the man sounds like he has a mouthful of potatoes.
A moment later a new voice says, “What is it?”
“What’s wrong with the other guy?”
“He ate something hot. Why are you bothering us?”
“I want to tell you that I just wasted an hour talking to Porthip. I’m supposed to be filing some sort of report in a couple of days, and if they’re all as uninformative as he is, it’s going to be pretty thin.”
“That’s not our problem.”
Rafferty is almost certain the voice belongs to Captain Teeth, Ton’s enforcer, next to him in the photo from the Garden of Eden. “I’m supposed to be writing a book here. These are my sources, remember? The ones you gave me. The information value of the conversation I just had was zero. Porthip doesn’t like Pan. That sound like a chapter to you?”
“Like I said, not our problem. Make something out of it.”
“I’m beginning to wonder about your competence.”
“You’re beginning-” The other man starts to laugh. “Our
Rafferty stands there, weak with anger. What he wants to do is phone Arthit and ask his friend to find out whatever he can about Porthip and Ton, but he knows that’s not possible. For the first time since he met Arthit, they might as well be strangers.
Noi, he thinks, with a jolt of despair. He can’t even ask about Noi without feeling like he’s imposing. And he still hasn’t told Rose that Arthit’s afraid Noi is planning to kill herself. It’s almost enough to make Rafferty’s own troubles seem trivial.
Except for Rose and Miaow.
He considers calling Kosit, but the people Arthit fears could obviously erase Kosit from the equation even more easily than they could Arthit, since Kosit is a much more obscure cop than Arthit. The second obvious source of information, newspapers, is also closed to him. He figures it’s not just the
He could say it’s research, of course. He resolves to hold that option for later.
So.
So, he guesses, that makes it time to eat.
