Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller полностью

“Not the plan,” Captain Teeth says. “The man wants everybody on the job.”

“Well, what are they doing? Does it sound like they’re coming out or what?”

“They’re sitting around talking about hair color.”

“Must be the little girl. She had it dyed red a day or two ago.”

“Apparently it looks great,” Captain Teeth says. “Stay where you are.” He closes the phone and drops it onto the console.

Out on the street in front of Rafferty’s apartment house, the man who’s been assigned to Rose watches a few street kids float by. Five or six of them. They’ve been up and down the street a couple of times, just straggling along, peering through the windows of parked cars and generally looking for trouble. One of them had asked him for money, and the man had shown the kids the back of his hand and told them to beat it. But they were back.

If he had his way, the man who’s been assigned to Rose thinks, they’d all be rounded up and put in jail. Little animals. They invade neighborhood after neighborhood, looking for pockets to pick, things to steal. Give real crooks a bad name. Lock them all in a cage, drop the key in the river, and drop the cage on top of it. Or do like they did in that Japanese movie, whatever it was called-Battle Royale, that was it-and strand them on an island and force them to kill one another until only one’s left. And then write a new ending and kill the one who’s left.

At the corner the kids turn around and drift back aimlessly, and suddenly one of the kids at the rear of the pack lets out a scream of warning, and about ten new kids round the corner at a run. The gang the man has been watching breaks into a full-out sprint with the others in pursuit. The ones in front look terrified. Two of the bigger boys in the group that’s chasing them are waving something that look like ax handles. They chase the smaller group like a pack of wild dogs.

The man settles back in his doorway to enjoy the show. The kids in front make a rapid turn to their right, as tightly knit as a flock of swallows, and disappear down the ramp into the garage beneath the apartment house. The other group, the larger group, follows.

A man in the garage bellows in Thai, “Out! Get out!” and a second later the kids erupt onto the street again, the groups mixed now into a single cloud of children, and there’s another deep shout, and a tall, fat guard in uniform runs out of the garage behind them, brandishing a billy club. The kids pick up the pace, and five or six seconds later they’ve all vanished around the corner, the guard in pursuit.

The man who’s been assigned to Rose realizes he’s stepped out into the sunlight to watch the spectacle, and he retreats back into the shade. For a few seconds, it occurs to him, he was so interested he hadn’t given a thought to how hot it is.

IN THE GARAGE, Rafferty puts his unbandaged hand up to the spot on his cheek where Miaow kissed him just before she joined the swarm of kids and charged up to the street, her ragged clothes fluttering as she ran. The sight produced a surprising pang. When he first met her, she’d been running with kids just like these.

He goes to the elevator and pushes the button for the fourth floor. Time for Part Two.

Sunlight as thin and unsatisfying as gruel, not even intense enough to throw shadows. The phone at Rafferty’s ear is slick with sweat, an aftereffect of Rose and Miaow’s escape.

“He’s not in,” says Porthip’s secretary.

“When will he be in?” The floor he spent so much time cleaning has gotten gritty again, and he drags his feet over it, enjoying the sound.

“I have no idea.”

Just for the hell of it, he kicks the stool that’s pinched his butt so many times and watches it topple over onto its side. He doesn’t think he’ll ever have to see it again, and he won’t miss it. “Is that usual?” he asks. “That you’d have no idea when he’ll be in?”

“No,” she says. “When he gets in touch with me, would you like me to tell him what this concerns?”

“He’ll know what it concerns,” Rafferty says. “Can’t you get in touch with him?”

The woman does not reply for a moment, and then she says, “No.”

“Really. Is that usual?”

“Oh, well,” she says. “It’ll be in the paper tomorrow anyway. He’s in the hospital.”

“Which one?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Sure you can.” He looks at his watch. About forty minutes more on the tape that’s running upstairs. He’ll have to go up, do his stuff in the apartment, and put in the next cassette. “Anyway, there’s only one hospital he’d go to.”

“Really,” she says neutrally.

“Sure. Bumrungrad.”

There’s a short pause, and she says, “Well, that’ll be in the paper, too. But before you get smug, Bumrungrad’s a very big hospital.”

“Right,” Rafferty says. “I’ll never manage to find him.”

He hangs up and calls Kosit.

“OUT OF THE question,” Dr. Ravi says. He’d answered the phone at Pan’s office. “You can’t just stop by and see him any time.”

“It’s not any time,” Rafferty says. “It’s half an hour from now.”

“This is a very bad day. Extremely busy.”