Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller полностью

Rafferty is now the only customer in the bank. The other tellers are counting out, snapping rubber bands around stacks of currency, and slipping dust covers over their terminals. He’d known that the withdrawal would attract attention eventually, but he hadn’t figured it would happen in real time.

“I’m going to be late,” he says. “Either let’s wrap this up in a minute or two or let’s forget it and I’ll come back on Monday.”

“I’m so sorry. Let me go talk to him.” And she’s up again, on her way back to the fat man’s office.

The guys at the apartment, Rafferty thinks. They’re three minutes away. They’ve got phones. But Rose and Miaow are talking in the apartment, and he doesn’t think Ton’s controllers would move the watchers while they’re hearing-

It feels as if his stomach plummets two feet.

Did he plug in the tape recorder?

Rose’s voice has dropped several tones, abandoning its normal alto in favor of something that’s beginning to sound like a drug-wobbled baritone. She finishes her sentence, and there is a long pause. When Miaow answers, her voice is almost as low as Rose’s, and her words have a kind of ripple, like something seen underwater.

“Hey,” Captain Teeth says to Ren. “Listen to this.”

Ren puts on his own headset, squints at the sound for a second, turns up the volume, closes his eyes, opens them again, yanks his headset off, throws it onto the console, and says, with considerable vehemence, “Shit.” He meets Captain Teeth’s gaze. “Brunch or no brunch,” he says, “he’s gotta know about this.” He reaches for his phone, and it rings. He grabs it.

“Yes?” he says.

“I just got a call,” Ton says. “Rafferty’s withdrawing all the money. It’s the Thai Fisherman’s Bank on Silom, around the corner from the apartment. I think he’s going to run. Get the other two guys over there right now.”

“The conversation in the apartment,” Ren says. “It’s a tape.”

Ton says nothing for long enough that Ren asks, “Are you there?”

“I’m here. That means the woman and the girl are gone. He’s the only one we’ve got. I’ll have them stall him in the bank. I want those men there right now. They should try to take him.”

Ren says carefully, “Take him.”

“Take him,” Ton says, as though he’s talking to an idiot. “Get him under control. Take him somewhere. Are we speaking different languages?”

“And if they can’t? I mean, if he resists? Or if he goes nuts? What happens when they get him where they’re-”

“Just make me happy,” Ton says, and disconnects.

“He wants us to make him happy,” Ren says, tossing his phone onto the console. “Who’s making us happy?” He gets up and goes behind Ton’s desk and sits in the big chair. “If Rafferty’s dead, the man doesn’t need us. We could be hanging in the breeze.”

“You worry too much,” Captain Teeth says. He gets up. “Where is he? I’ll go over there myself.”

“Thai Fisherman’s Bank, Silom.”

Captain Teeth checks the holster in the middle of his back. When he’s satisfied, he slips into a sport coat and heads for the door. As he goes through it, he says, without looking over his shoulder, “If he catches you in that chair, you’ll need a new ass next time you sit down.”

THE SWEAT POPS on Rafferty’s upper lip in less than a heartbeat. He’d been timing himself in the apartment, staying within his ten-minute limit, hurrying to get to Pan’s early enough to let him come here so he could walk into a trap. And he hadn’t done the most important thing. He’d left the tape recorder running on batteries. He hadn’t plugged it in.

He turns to face the sidewalk. Still busy, still full of people he doesn’t recognize.

And then he sees one he does recognize, the man who was driving the car behind him all the way to Pan’s. He’s leaning against a parked truck, doing nothing. Looking everywhere except at the window.

“Umm,” says the teller, and Rafferty turns to her.

“You’ve been banking here a long time, right?” Her face is full of uncertainty.

“Years.”

“I see you in here sometimes,” she says. “With a little girl?”

“My daughter.”

“That’s what I thought.” She picks up a pad of old photocopies that have been turned blank side up and stapled together to create a scratch pad. She begins to draw a girl’s face, all big eyes and long curling hair. She inks a heart above the girl’s head, then several more, a little cloud of hearts floating in midair. Without looking up, she says, “It’s a police hold.”

“Police.”

“That’s who he’s talking to. It was on the computer. A police number to call for any withdrawal from your account for more than two thousand U.S.”

“It’s a mistake of some kind,” Rafferty says. He needs to mop his forehead, but he doesn’t want to draw the attention of the man in the office. “Was there a name?”

“No,” she says. “But I’m sure you’re right. It’s a mistake.”