Keeping his movement small, using nothing but his left arm, he pushes on doors as he goes past them, twisting the occasional handle. He’s getting too close to a group of three cops who are stopping people on the sidewalk. If they look up and survey the crowd, they’ll see his face. Arthit is on the verge of taking a desperate chance and crossing the wide, empty street when the door he’s pushing on swings away from him.
He’d actually given up, and the open door takes him by surprise. He has to back up a step to go through it. It’s a glass door, framed in weathered, pockmarked aluminum. When it shuts behind him, he checks to see whether it can be locked from inside, but no-it needs to be keyed.
He finds himself in a small, murky space with just enough room for the door to clear the bottom step. The only light other than the splash from the street comes from a fluorescent tube at the top of the stairway. Without a backward glance, he turns away from the street and starts to climb the stairs, trying not to hurry. Hurry draws attention.
The night opens to the
At the top of the stairs, he finds a door and a switchback leading to another flight of stairs. He reaches up and pops the fluorescent tube loose and stands for a moment in the welcome darkness. Then he climbs the next flight of stairs.
There are three floors above the shop, then a short flight of stairs that leads to the roof. Each stair landing has a light, and after a moment’s thought he leaves the others on. If the cops come up the stairs and discover that the first fluorescent has been detached from its connection, additional tampering on the higher floors will just give them a trail to follow. He might as well put up a sign that says LOOK HERE. At the very top of the stairs, he checks out the door to the roof and finds it padlocked on the inside. He goes back down to the door on the first landing and gives it a shove. It opens onto a hallway, only ten or fifteen meters long, with two doors on each side. Four apartments in all.
He knows that finding an empty apartment is too much to hope for, but he quietly tries the doorknobs anyway. All locked. At the third one, he hears a questioning voice from inside: Someone must be waiting for a visitor. He barely makes it back to the stairwell before he hears the apartment door open. A moment later it closes again. He leans against the wall on the dark stair landing, fighting to get his breath under control.
Then, forcing his legs to move again, he turns and hauls himself up the stairs to the next floor. The apartment doors here are also locked, but at the end of the hall is a fifth door, which he pulls open. He finds himself looking at mops and brooms. A big, rust-stained, industrial-size basin hangs from one wall. A sagging shelf above the sink holds floor wax, powdered cleanser, paper towels. Nothing he can use. He thinks about taking the powdered cleanser, maybe throwing it into someone’s eyes, then rejects it. There will certainly be a gun pointed at him, and he’ll be dead before his target even sneezes.
He’s climbing up to the third floor when he hears the door to the street open.
“Wait here,” says a male voice. It’s a voice that sounds comfortable with command. “We’ll go up. You guys keep your eyes on the sidewalk. And nobody gets out through this door.”
RAFFERTY IS IN the dirty, empty master bedroom of the fourth-floor apartment with no memory of how he got there. “He can’t come here,” Rafferty says. “This place is being watched twenty-four hours, and it’s the first place they’ll look. If he calls you, tell him not to come here.”
“I don’t know whether he’ll call me,” Kosit says. “And there’s no way for me to reach him.”
Rafferty’s bandaged hand fires off a telegram of pain. He’s accidentally put it against the wall to steady himself. He tucks it safely under his right arm and considers whether to ask the next question. “Did you see her?”
A pause. Then, “Yes.”
“Did he?”
“The envelope on the door said not to go in, but you know him. He figured she might still be alive.”
Rafferty’s eyes are closed so tightly he sees red fireworks. “How bad was it?”
“She was an angel,” Kosit says. Rafferty can hear him swallow even on the phone. “She put on a really nice dress and even some makeup. She got all pretty, lay on her back, spread her hair out on the pillow, and went to sleep.”
“God bless her,” Rafferty says around the stone in his throat. “Hold on.” He tucks the phone under his left arm, wipes the cheeks he hadn’t known were wet, and dries his hand on his shirt. Then he puts the phone back to his ear. “Do you have any idea where he might have gone?”
