“THERE ARE TWENTY-FOUR right now,” Boo says. He reaches up to the wall behind him and rubs the hanging blanket between his thumb and forefinger as though he’s thinking about buying it. “Sometimes there are more, sometimes not so many.”
“Twenty-six,” says the girl, who has been introduced as Da. “If you count us.”
“Twenty-five and a half,” Boo says, and Da grins, and Rafferty has to tighten his jaw to keep it from dropping. The kid made a
“Excuse me,” Da says politely. “Why is your hand like that?”
“I don’t want to forget my Carpenters CD,” Rafferty says. “This way I never do.”
“But-” Da says, looking puzzled.
The boy says, “Don’t joke with her. She believes everything.”
And Rafferty watches in amazement as the girl takes one hand off the baby and swats Superman-
“But you can’t
“This is my contribution to the evening, wherever I go,” Rafferty says. “Making sure that there’s at least one Carpenters CD that nobody can play.”
“Who stomped on your hand?” Boo asks.
“Someone you’ll never have to meet.”
The boy shrugs without much interest and looks around. Despite Rafferty’s efforts, the apartment on the fourth floor is dingy and cheerless. Through a six-inch gap between the sheets and pillowcases he hung over the windows, he can see wet-looking streaks of whatever the hell is left on glass after it’s been badly washed.
“Why are we here?” Boo asks. “Where’s Miaow?”
“We’re here because we can’t go upstairs for a bunch of reasons,” Rafferty says, “and Miaow is out right now with Rose.”
“What reasons?” the boy asks.
The girl asks, “Who’s Miaow?”
“My daughter,” Rafferty says, and suddenly an idea breaks over him like a wave. It’s enough to make him sit forward and forget about the hand for a moment. “Twenty-four kids? You’ve got twenty-four kids?”
“Give or take,” Boo says.
Da says, “How old is Miaow?”
“Then you can help me,” Rafferty says, closing his eyes. He’s been in another poker game for the past few days, he realizes, playing against pros this time, and he’s suddenly been dealt a hand full of wild cards. He’s already seeing it in his mind, setting up the bluff, figuring out what he’ll need.
“Good,” Boo says, settling into his uncomfortable chair, “because we need you to help us, too.”
Da says again, “How old is-” but the boy cuts her off with a glance.
“WHERE ARE YOU?” demands Captain Teeth.
“Outside the apartment,” says the man who had been watching Rafferty. “I only lost him for five or ten minutes this time.”
Captain Teeth rests his forehead in his hand. “What do you mean,
“He went into a building an hour or so ago. He must have come out the back way or something, because I was out front the whole time. I picked him up about half an hour later, and he’d hurt his hand somehow. He went into another building and got it bandaged, and then…well, then-”
“Kid stole your wallet.” Captain Teeth turns up the volume on the console. He has one earpiece of his headphone still in place, and the cell phone pressed to his other ear. Rafferty’s apartment is silent.
“Three of the little bastards. But I got it back.”
“I don’t give a shit about your wallet. You shouldn’t have chased them.”
“It was my
“Oh, golly,” Captain Teeth says, listening to the silence in Rafferty’s living room. “A few baht, some fake ID, maybe a condom. No wonder they tossed it.”
“They got eight hundred baht.”
“You’d already lost him once, you idiot. You should have stayed with him.”
“Okay.” When Captain Teeth doesn’t say anything, the man adds, “Sorry.”
“Any chance it was a setup?”
“You mean, do I think he’s running a ring of homeless kids? No. The sidewalk was full of them. Must have been twenty.”
Captain Teeth says, “Is that normal?”
“No,” the man says grudgingly, “but come on. They move around. If they didn’t, everybody’d be on the lookout all the time.”
“What about the hand?”
“I don’t know. Maybe cut, maybe broken. All wrapped up in bandages.”
“Any lights on in the apartment right now?”
The man on the street counts balconies and corner windows until he gets to Rafferty’s floor. “The one in the living room.”
“Well, I can’t hear him.”
“Are the woman and the girl in there? I don’t see the guys who follow them.”
“No,” Captain Teeth says. “They went out ten, fifteen minutes ago. The guys are behind them.”
“So,” the man on the street says, “what’s the problem? There’s no one for him to talk to.”
“The woman got a phone call just before they went out,” Captain Teeth says. “And what it all adds up to is that we don’t really know where Rafferty is, and the building went for ten minutes or so with nobody watching it.” He sits back in his chair and takes the nail of his uninjured thumb between his straggling incisors.
