“But that’s not why we’re here anyway,” Boo says into the silence. “It’s about the baby. It’s about Peep.”
HE BLOWS OUT in relief as the machine yields five thousand baht more. That’s twenty-eight thousand, roughly eight hundred American dollars. The credit card worked again, but he’s hit the limit for twenty-four hours, and by then the cards will be dead anyway. Thanom has the clout for that, and the people who are screwing with Rafferty have enough power, and probably enough foot soldiers, to put a man on every ATM in Bangkok.
His shirt is soaked through, the sweat turning the chocolate brown material almost black. It’s still hot out, but this is the sweat of fury. When he thinks of Thanom, his hands involuntarily clench at his sides. The man has deprived Arthit of his time to mourn.
What would Noi want Arthit to do now? The answer comes as clearly as if she were standing beside him, whispering in his ear. He should take care of himself.
He briefly asks himself whether the best way to take care of himself would be to turn himself in, then dismisses it. The two cops who came to his door had removed their name plates. If only one of them hadn’t been wearing his name, Arthit might have chalked it up to sloppiness or a memory lapse. But both of them? Something very wrong there. Kosit was the one who had called in the death, so whoever took the call knew there was another cop in Arthit’s house. The two who came to the door didn’t want Kosit to know their names.
He doesn’t think Thanom would have him killed. But
And that something has to be connected with Pan. This all began with Pan.
He catches a whiff of his own sweat and glances down at his shirt.
Right, clothes. The booths that crowd the sidewalks of Pratunam are beginning to shut-there’s a dark spot here and there where the spotlights have already been doused-but the sellers who are active are eager to accommodate a policeman. Within twenty minutes he has bags containing three anonymous plaid shirts, a couple of generic T-shirts, and two pairs of preshrunk, precreased, totally indestructible and wholly synthetic pants that will probably be the last man-made objects on earth. His shoes are a dead giveaway, cop from soles to laces, but they fit well, and if anyone gets close enough to look at them, he’s finished anyway. He makes a final stop at a booth that sells toiletry articles and buys a razor, some shaving foam, a comb, and a toothbrush. The woman studies him as she puts them into the bag, wondering why a cop needs to buy the stuff for a night out and concluding that he’s got some action lined up somewhere. She practically winks at him as she hands him his purchases.
She’ll remember him, too.
So far, he thinks, tucking the bag under his arm with the others, I might as well be fluorescent, leaving glowing footprints everywhere I go. How the hell did crooks manage?
Still, with the change of clothes in a bag and the night stretching out around him in all directions, he can feel a sort of click inside, a hardening of purpose and sharpening of focus he has come to regard as his cop mode. When he feels like this, he occasionally visualizes himself as a human flashlight, pointed forward, sharp-eyed, able to ignore the irrelevant and cut through the fog of confusion. This is when he does his best work.
But the lift in his spirits doesn’t last long. He’s looking for someplace he can change clothes when he sees the blinking lights. Regular, steady, red flashes, coming from the intersection half a block in front of him. He turns around to put some distance between himself and the police van, then halts. There are red lights in the street behind him, too, at the other end of the block. And he stands there, clutching the bags as the illusion of competence recedes, asking himself why on earth he took the time to go shopping on the same street where he used an ATM.
“THEY TOOK THE kid away from her,” Da says. “Like it was a lamp or something, not a…a child. And next time I saw her, she had a new one. They gave her a baby. The same way they gave Peep to me.”
“Wichat did,” Rafferty says, just trying to keep track.
Da says, “I guess so.”
“He’s been sending beggars out with babies for at least a year,” Boo says. “Everybody on the street knows it. But nobody says anything. He’s not a friendly guy.”
“Where does he get them? Any idea what he’s doing?”
