For the Dead (25 page)

Miaow’s eyes fill most of her face and her shoulders are trembling.

Rafferty says, “I think that’s enough, Rose.”

“Do you?” Rose straightens her legs and puts her bare feet on the coffee table. “What I think is that this is a conversation between women, and maybe you should get some rest after chasing all over Bangkok to find the missing princess.”

Rafferty says, “No,” just as Miaow says, “Yes.”

Rose says, “Two to one. Get yourself a beer and go into the bedroom.” She looks over at him, and her face softens. “Please.”

Rafferty says, “We do have to talk about the knife.”

“We will. First, Miaow and I need to get some of the smoke out of the room.”

Poke says, “Do you want something? Either of you?”

Rose closes her eyes and says with enormous patience, “We both know where it all is.”

He has to say something, so he says, “Well, then.” He goes into the kitchen, pops the cap on a Singha, and stands irresolute in front of the open refrigerator until Rose calls out, “Don’t forget to close it, like some people do.”

“Righty ho,” Rafferty says, feeling as clueless as Bertie Wooster. “I have an idea,” he says, going back into the living room. “You go talk in Miaow’s room, and I’ll watch a little TV.”

Miaow is sitting on the hassock now, her legs crossed tightly beneath her, leaning forward with her hands on her knees, not a restful pose. The two of them give him identical looks, looks that make him feel like something they regret buying, and Rose says, “Goodbye, Poke.”

When the door closes behind him, both of them wait until they’re certain he’s kept going, that he’s not standing on the other side with his ear pressed to it. Miaow’s gaze falters, and she looks down at her crossed legs.

“Let’s begin,” Rose says, “with me saying I know you’re having a hard time.”

Miaow blinks heavily, as though she’s been slapped.

“This is a miserable time for a girl. I know nobody wants to hear this, especially not from her mother, but you’ll live through it. If I lived through it, anybody can.”

“You?” Miaow says. “You’re beautiful.”

“I was the town joke,” Rose says. “I was too tall, I was all knees and elbows, I was half blind. I
squinted
at everybody.
Stork
is not a flattering nickname.”

“I’m a dwarf,” Miaow says. “A black dwarf.”

Rose says, “Oh, shut up,” and Miaow rocks back. “You’re going to be beautiful. Go look at your eyes. Look at the shape of your mouth. Go suck in your cheeks, because those are going to disappear. Your nose is perfect.”

“I barely have a nose.”

“You act like there’s a hole in the middle of your face. Listen to me. This isn’t just about what you look like. You don’t even know what you look like. This is about you not liking who you are, and I know
everything
about that. I was a tall, ugly child whose own father tried to sell her, and then I was a whore. Your turn, tell me what you’ve got to compare with that.”

Miaow is using the tip of her index finger to write something invisible on the glass surface of the table. Rose can’t see her eyes, and she’s pressing hard enough to turn her fingernail white.

Rose says, “Do you actually think we don’t love you?”

Miaow stops moving. Then she brings her knees up and wraps her arms around them and lowers her head until it rests on her knees. “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. We both love you more than we love anything else in the world. Every day, we wake up happy just because you’re here. Both of us, we’re only really ourselves when you’re with us.”

“When were—” Miaow begins, her head still down.

“When were—when were we going to tell you?”

“Yes.”

“Miaow. I’ve only known for three days. I was only sure on the night before you and Andrew got into all that trouble.”

“Is that true?”

“Do I lie to you?”

Nothing. Just the top of her head with its fading dye job, the chopped haircut growing out to the point where her natural center part is beginning to reassert itself. The shoulder seam of her angry-duck T-shirt separating a bit to show the brown shoulder beneath.

Rose says, “Do I?”

“No.”

“No, I don’t. And now,” she says, lowering her voice, “here’s the reason I made Poke leave. This isn’t a lie I told him, it’s just something I haven’t talked about yet. That means you’re the only person who knows about it. And you have to promise me that you’ll let me be the one to tell him.”

Miaow raises her head. When she sees Rose’s face, she nods.

“This baby I’m carrying, this is the second.”

Miaow’s eyebrows come together in a question, and then her mouth opens and she looks quickly down at the floor, but Rose can see that she’s listening all the way to her toes.

“The first one, when she was about three months along,” Rose says, and grabs a breath, “she decided not to be born. I didn’t lose her on purpose, she just didn’t want the life I could have given her. I had a—a miscarriage. Until a few days ago, I didn’t think I could have another child.”

Miaow has knotted her hand in her hair and, apparently, forgotten about it. Her hair is bearing the entire weight of her arm.

“When I knew about the baby
—this
baby—I thought she was my first, coming back to be born.”

Miaow says, “Maybe it is.”

“No,” Rose says. “It isn’t. I worked out the time, Miaow, and I realized that it’s you.”

Miaow starts to say something, stops, and asks, “What is?”

“
You’re
my first baby, Miaow. You came back so you could find your way back to me. To us.” Her face is wet but she doesn’t seem to be weeping. “It was
thirteen years ago
, Miaow,” she says. “You found us all the way across this city. Like water running downhill.” She blots her cheeks with the heel of her hand. “I’ve always been your mother. So, you see, this really is your little brother or sister. It can’t come between us.”

Miaow says, “I thought. I mean, I thought—there would be a cord between you and your baby, when the baby came out, and that cord would be there forever.”

“Miaow,” Rose says, “do you really think there’s no cord between us?”

“I
T
’
S OBVIOUSLY SAFE
in here,” Rafferty says from the doorway.

Rose has moved to the end of the couch, and Miaow is on her
side with her knees drawn up and her head on Rose’s lap. Without looking up, Miaow says, “I love you, Poke.”

“I know,” he says, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear it. I love you, too.”

Miaow says, “You don’t have to tell me.”

“Okay,” Rafferty says. “What’s a guy
supposed
to say?”

Rose says, “Is there any of that awful whiskey left?”

“Unless you drank it.”

“Three glasses,” Rose says.

“Are you sure?”

“This is a special occasion,” Rose says. “Miaow’s allowed.”

“I wasn’t thinking about Miaow,” Rafferty says. “Miaow can have as much as she wants. It’s you that—” He’s started toward the kitchen but he stops so suddenly he might have reached the end of a rope. “You haven’t been smoking,” he says.

Rose says, “I thought you’d never notice.”

“Well, that’s amazing and I admire the hell out of you for it, but I still don’t think you should have a drink.”

“Is eating still okay? Breathing?”

“Anything in the world you want is okay except smoking and drinking.”

Miaow says, “There’s nothing left,” and Rose laughs softly and smoothes Miaow’s ragged hair.

“Two whiskeys,” Rafferty says, “Coming up.”

“If Rose can’t have it, I don’t want it, either.”

“Well, I sure as hell don’t want it. I was only drinking it to keep my twelve-year-old daughter company.”

“Thirteen,” Miaow says.

“Historians are divided on that.”

Rose says, “Thirteen.”

“We have a new source?” Rafferty says. “Something I don’t know about?” Miaow smiles and snuggles in Rose’s lap. “Well, okay, there’s
always
something I don’t know about. Since I’ve been spared the whiskey, I’ll have a beer.”

“Diet Coke for me,” Miaow says.

“And how about you, little mother?” Poke says, suddenly feeling as happy as he ever has in his life. “A nice glass of warm tap water? I could scatter some powdered yeast over it.”

“Nine months,” Rose says. “I have to put up with you for nine months.”

A
N HOUR LATER
, with Rose and Miaow in bed, Rafferty sits at his cramped little desk, in the long rectangle of gloom cast by the television. All the lights in the living room are on the other side of the screen, so he’s turned on the pinspots above the breakfast counter.

As soon as he was alone he allowed himself to give in to the waves of panic that had been lapping at him all evening, ever since he learned about the knife. What in the
world
can he do? He doesn’t know who these people are, or where, or why they want to kill his daughter.

And then there’s Treasure. Anna is right; if he promises something to that child, who’s never been given anything but sorrow in her miserable life, he had better be one hundred percent certain he can make it happen.

And sustain it. She’s not going to get up in a week, say, “I’m all right now,” and apply to a prep school.

Just as he’s feeling his smallest and least effective, a whole swarm of other concerns begins to swirl around him, dive-bombing like hornets. What he wants is another beer. What he does is open a drawer and pull out two sheets of paper and a pen.

What Arthit had said, about it being an illusion when problems swirl together into one, that’s what he’s facing.
Keep them separate
, Arthit had said.

Aloud, Rafferty says, “How hard is that?” He thinks he hits just the right tone of voice. Anyone who heard it would think he was confident.

He folds a blank sheet of paper in half and tears it. The very act
of separating the two sheets eases his tension. On one half he writes
Miaow
and on the other he writes
Treasure
. Then he takes another sheet of paper and, without tearing it, writes, at the top,
The Baby
.

It takes him no more than a few minutes to create a list on the page headed
The Baby
. It begins with
Obstetrician?
and ends, on the other side, with
New apartment
. Just looking at it makes him feel productive.

He realizes that the page headed
Treasure
can also be divided in two, so he draws a line down the center to create a second column. He heads it,
Neeni
.

Even before he begins to fill it in, he gets up and goes to the couch. He pulls out the center cushion, turns it over, and unzips the white canvas cover. The bills he took from Murphy’s house are all US hundreds, in stacks of twenty, and he removes twenty-five stacks. That’ll take care of the fifty thousand he’d promised Hwa in exchange for staying in Bangkok with Neeni and trying to get her off the codeine.

He replaces the center cushion and removes the one on the left. Five more stacks will give Neeni ten thousand to take home to her village. That should keep her in codeine for a while. Any more will be stolen while she’s out bumping into trees. He takes the money to his desk, snaps rubber bands around the two stacks, and makes two new notes in the Neeni column,
Bank account
, and beneath that,
Monthly transfers
.

Beneath
Monthly transfers
, he writes
Travel plans
. The two of them need to get home, Neeni to Laos and Hwa to Vietnam. Hwa can be trusted to arrange it, but she’ll need more money. He goes back to the center cushion and pulls out another thousand, which he folds and puts in his pocket. That seems to take care of the
Neeni
sheet for the moment.

There’s a slight easing around his heart, and he stretches his legs. It feels like days since he’s slept.

Well, those are the easy ones, the baby and Neeni. He adds to
the sheet about the baby,
Let Miaow name it?
He hasn’t had a chance to discuss it with Rose, but he likes the idea.

So. The real problems.

Under
Miaow
, he writes,
Stay in touch with Arthit for info
and beneath that, he writes,
Let her go to school, yes or no?
and beneath that,
Some kind of guard?
And then,
Captain Nguyen
. Then, to the right, he writes
Miaow and Andrew
and draws an arrow to
Captain Nguyen
. Then he writes,
Andrew in danger?
And draws a second arrow to Captain Nguyen.

He looks at what he’s written and realizes it’s all reactive. In large letters, centered at the bottom of the page, he writes
AIM AND IGNITE
. He’d seen the words on the screen of Miaow’s laptop when she was listening to a band called Fun. He doesn’t know what the words mean relative to the band or its songs, but he knows what it means in regard to Miaow. It means, find a way to go on the offensive and then take it.

Someone chased his daughter with a knife. It’s connected with this snarl of questions about the murders of Sawat and Thongchai. Enough of sitting passively on the sidelines with his fingers crossed: Time to aim and ignite. Aim
what
, aim it at
whom
, and ignite it with
what
; those are details. What matters now is the intent.

He goes back to the column headed
Treasure
.

Looks at it for perhaps a minute. Swears beneath his breath, and writes
Everything
.

A
T FIRST,
A
RTHIT
blames the software.

He’s cranky, stiff-backed, over-caffeinated, and jammed into a tiny, stuffy office in the dirtiest police station he’s ever been in. He’d been forty minutes late, thanks to the kind of traffic jam that might result from it being the end of the world, and everyone knowing which direction the damage is coming from. His mood was not improved by three calls from Thanom, demanding to know where he was. After the third, he tossed the phone onto the passenger seat with enough force to make it bounce off the seat and onto the floor. Glaring down at it, he heard a horn behind him, looked up to see that traffic was moving, and accelerated.