Breathing Water (3 page)

I
t’s an eight.

The other six men at the table barely give it a glance, but Rafferty suddenly has a buzzing in his ears that sounds like a low-voltage power line. He squeezes his eyes closed and opens them again.

It’s still an eight.

The Big Guy leans forward, watching him. He passes the tube over his lips and says, in that high, buttery voice, “The
farang
is interested.”

Rafferty barely hears him. If he were forced at gunpoint to make an estimate—and it’s looking increasingly likely that someone
will
be at gunpoint soon—Rafferty would put the value of the chips in the pot somewhere in the neighborhood of 750,000 baht—about $24,000 U.S. Not exactly the national debt, but certainly the largest amount he’s ever risked on the turn of a card.

Of course, he’s only been playing for ten days.

Feeling the Big Guy’s eyes on him, he grabs eight chips off his stack and clicks them together four times. He does his best to make the gesture seem natural, but it feels like the staged business it is, transparently
phony, bad blocking in an amateur play. He closes his hand around the chips and finds them wet with sweat.

The Big Guy leans back in his chair, his pink mouth puckering around his cigar. The bodyguards watch everyone else.

The man three seats to Rafferty’s right had dealt the hand. He’s a sallow-faced man in a shiny suit that’s either brown or green depending on the light, but not a good shade of either. He waits indifferently for the man to his left to make his move. The man, one of the businessmen, makes a tight little mouth like a reluctant kiss and throws in a couple thousand. The uniformed man on the businessman’s other side, Rafferty’s friend Arthit, has the bet in hand and tosses it into the pot with the air of someone making a donation at the temple of an unreliable god. The moment Rafferty has been dreading has arrived. He tries to look thoughtful as he waits to be told what to do.

The one whose job it is to tell him, seated directly opposite him at the round green felt table, is as lean as a matador and as dark as a used teabag, with a hatchet-narrow face, and hair that has been dyed so black it has blue highlights. With his eyes resting lazily on the pile of chips in the center of the table, he turns the signet ring on his right hand so the stone is beneath his finger and then brings it back up again.

The hum in Rafferty’s ears rises in pitch, as though the power line has been stretched tighter. The room seems to brighten.

It takes all of Rafferty’s willpower to keep his hands steady as he pushes his entire pile of chips toward the center of the green felt. He says, “I’m all in.”

There is a general shifting around the table as people adjust themselves in their chairs and survey the new landscape of risk. Rafferty has about 290,000 baht in chips—he’s been having a selectively good night, just barely not good enough to be suspicious. This is a bet that could remove at least two of the players from the game.

One of them is the Big Guy.

Four days ago, when this game was being planned, there had been only three people in the room: Rafferty, Arthit, and the hatchet-faced man. They had been sitting in a dingy meeting room in a police station, a room to which the hatchet-faced man had been brought directly from his jail cell. He’d been promised six months off his sentence if he succeeded in fooling the pigeons—the businessmen—at the table, thereby
guaranteeing that he’d do his best with the four dodges he was to perform during the game. Arthit and the other policeman, whose name is Kosit, had been promised a “consideration” of 50,000 baht apiece by the casino owners who were looking for ways to spot the dodges, and for whose enlightenment the game is secretly being videotaped.

But no one had expected the Big Guy.

And now, seated to Rafferty’s left, he blows out a quart of cigar smoke and leans back in his chair. His eyes flick to Rafferty again and then away. Late forties, strong as a horse beneath fifteen pounds of soft, wet fat, he holds the cigar dead center in a tightly pursed mouth.

He says in English, “Bluff.”

“Easy to find out,” Rafferty says. His heart is beating so hard he can actually feel the cloth of his shirt brush his chest.

A cloud of smoke, waved away so the Big Guy can peer down at Rafferty’s chips. “How much is that,
farang?
”

“Two hundred ninety-two thousand,” Rafferty says.

“I’ve only got two-eighty-five.”

“In or out?” asks the dealer.

“In,” says the Big Guy. He pushes his chips into the center of the felt and then drops the last few thousand-baht chips on top of the pile, one at a time. Then he switches to Thai. “Look at your money,” he says, “because you’re never going to see it again.”

The hatchet-faced man throws in his cards. The dealer and the man next to him also fold. Arthit takes a last look at the faceup cards and then mucks his own, making it unanimous. The man to Rafferty’s right, who has already folded, shifts in his chair to watch the showdown.

“After you,” Rafferty says to the Big Guy. The Big Guy moves the cigar to the corner of that pink mouth and flips his cards. He’s got a straight: four, five, six, seven, eight.

“Gee,” Rafferty says. He looks at the Big Guy’s hand and shakes his head in admiration. Then he turns over one of his hole cards: an eight. “Let’s see,” he says, squinting at the table. “I haven’t played for very long, but this is an eight, and there are two more of them over there, so that makes three, right?” He flips the other card. “And here’s another one. So that means I’ve got four eights.” He looks around the table. “Who wins?”

The Big Guy’s chair hits the floor with a bang, and the bodyguards
step forward to flank him. “Who
wins
?” He takes three steps back, one of the bodyguards whisking the fallen chair out of his way. “You’re a cheat, you and that blue-haired freak over there. And you picked the wrong game.” He pushes back his suit coat, and suddenly Arthit is standing with his police automatic in his hand.

“Don’t
move
,” Arthit says, and Kosit, the man who dealt the hand, also pulls a gun and waves it around as though to say,
Look what I have
, although he doesn’t point it at anyone. “Khun Pan,” Arthit says to the Big Guy, “if you’re thinking about getting that little gun out of your shoulder holster, I have to advise against it.” The dealer’s gun comes to rest pointed at the nearest bodyguard.

“This…this game is fixed.” Pan is so furious he’s spluttering.

“Of course it is,” Arthit says. His eyes flick to the bodyguard at Pan’s right, who’s looking jumpy. “By the way, just to put all the information on the table, there’s no reason not to shoot you, so don’t get silly.”

“You should be ashamed,” Pan says. “Siding with this
farang
against a table full of honest Thais. He’s a cheat.”

“Yes, he is,” Arthit says. “But as you pointed out, he’s not the only one.” Neither the dealer nor the hatchet-faced man reacts, but two of the businessmen draw sharp breaths. “Tip here,” Arthit says, indicating the hatchet-faced man, “joined us this evening straight from the monkey house, where he’ll be staying for—how long is it, Tip?”

“Four years,” Tip says.

“With a little time off for tonight,” Arthit says. “Because Tip is way, way too lucky.”

“I saw the signal,” Pan says. “But if he’s so fucking good, how come he hasn’t won anything tonight?”

“He’s not supposed to. He’s been feeding Mr. Rafferty.”

“Feeding?”

“He’s been watching you,” Rafferty says in English, with Arthit providing more or less simultaneous translation and, to all appearances, enjoying it. “You’re watching him to see whether he’s cheating, but what he’s doing is lighthousing me, based on what he sees you do and what I have in my hand. Before I bet this last hand, I picked up eight chips and rattled them four times to tell I was holding four eights. He gave me a sign that said bet the house, and I did.”

“You shit
farang
,” Pan says. Rafferty starts to get up, but Arthit waves him back to his seat.

“You should be grateful,” Arthit says. “Tip pulled this trick in a game a few months ago that cost a friend of yours almost four million baht. So you got a free lesson. And before you get any more disagreeable, this is a sanctioned police operation, and you’re all going to get your money back.”

“And you’re going to lose your job,” Pan says. “I don’t want my fucking money back. I came here to play cards.”

“Tough,” Arthit says. To the dealer he says, “Give him the two hundred seventy-five thousand he came in with. Mr. Vinai,” he says to the man on Rafferty’s right, “you came in with a hundred and eighty-seven thousand. Officer Kosit here will count it out for you. You had two-ten,” he says to the other businessman.

“He’s a cop also?” Pan says, glaring at the dealer. He grabs the glass of brandy in front of him but doesn’t drink. “Is he? A cop?”

“Why?” Arthit says. “Are you going to get him fired, too?”

“I might,” Pan says. “What was the point of all this?”

“We, by which I mean the Bangkok police, arranged this game at the request of some people you know, actually—two of the guys who run the casinos on the Cambodian border. They face this stuff all the time.” He pauses, glances at Rafferty, and adds, “Also, in the interest of full disclosure, there’s Mr. Rafferty’s book.”

“A book?” This is one of the businessmen. “He’s writing a book?”

“He is,” Arthit answers. He is answering the businessman, but he’s watching with thinly veiled pleasure as Pan’s face turns an even deeper red. “What’s it called, Poke?”

“Living Wrong
,” Rafferty says. “I apprenticed myself to seven different kinds of crooks and then went along on an operation. Tip here is the last of my mentors.”

Pan seems to be having trouble breathing. “I’ll have you sweeping streets for this,” he says to Arthit. Kosit, the other cop, has been counting out chips and has slid several stacks toward Pan. Pan backhands them, scattering them across the table, then turns to Rafferty. “And you,” he says, “I’ll have you run out of the country.” He takes the cigar from his mouth, drops it on the carpet, and steps on it.

“That’s going to cost you,” Rafferty says in Thai. “Somebody’s got to pay for the rug.”

“One more word out of you,” Pan says, “and I’ll put my foot on your head.” This is a violent insult for a Thai.

“Sorry,” Rafferty says. He is so angry he feels like his throat has been sewn half shut. “I forgot that you’re used to dirt floors.”

Arthit says,
“Poke!”
and Pan brings back his hand and slings the cognac, glass and all, at Rafferty. The glass strikes Rafferty in the center of his chest. Cognac splashes down his jacket and onto his trousers, and before he knows it, he’s up and leaping at Pan even as the bodyguards push in front of him, and then there’s an earsplitting bang and all eyes turn to Arthit, who’s just put a hole in the ceiling.

“That’s enough of everything,” he says. “The evening is over. Each of you just take your money and go somewhere else to play. Is that clear?”

Rafferty is chest to chest with the nearer bodyguard. Everyone is now standing.

“I said,
‘Is that clear?’
” Arthit demands.

The two businessmen are already backing away from the table, but Pan takes a step forward. “Colonel,” he says to Arthit, “do you doubt I can have you fired? Do you doubt I can have this cheat’s visa canceled?”

“I think money usually gets its way,” Arthit says, his eyes as hard as marbles. “But not without consequences.”

Pan’s flush deepens. “You’re threatening me?”

“Oh,” Arthit says, “I think we’re past threats.” To Kosit he says, “Shoot the bodyguards if they so much as move.”

Even the businessmen who were backing away from the table stop. Someone’s cell phone begins to ring, but no one makes a move to answer.

Most Thais have an exquisitely accurate ability to read the emotional temperature of a confrontation and to veer away, even if it’s at the absolute last moment, from the point at which no one can back down without a serious loss of face. In the part of Rafferty’s mind that is functioning clearly, he knows that the line has just been crossed. And he knows that—since he’s not a Thai—he’s the only one with no significant face at stake, the only one who can step back, the only one who can retreat to the safe side of the line.

Slowly he eases himself away from the bodyguard and toward the table. He raises his hands, palms out, and sits. Then he looks down at his sport coat and brushes beads of cognac off it. The movement draws
the attention of everyone in the room. “Since I offended you,” Rafferty says to Pan, “what could I do to calm you down?”

Pan licks the pink lips. The look of uncertainty is back. “What…what could you…”

“What would it take?” Rafferty says. “To wrap this up, to send you home happy.”

Two heavy blinks. “There’s…there’s nothing….”

“Sure there is,” Rafferty says. “You’re too busy and too important to waste time making trouble for us, and Arthit doesn’t want to have to deal in consequences. And neither do I. So what would it take? An apology? A promise to leave your name out of the book? What?”

“Ah,” Pan says. His eyes dart around the room, and then he says again, “Ah.” He moves to the table and picks up some chips, then lets them trickle through his fingers, apparently giving them all his attention. “An
apology
,” he says, as though the concept is new to him. He brings his eyes to Arthit’s and says, “You. Would you apologize?”

“Sure,” Arthit says, although the word seems to hurt.

“And you,
farang
? Would you apologize?”

“I’ll apologize for playing unfairly,” Rafferty says. “And for being rude. Would that do it?”

For a moment he thinks it will work, but then Pan shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “I want a fair game.”

“I’m out,” says one of the businessmen, and the other nods agreement.

“No problem,” Pan says. He lifts his chin to Rafferty. “
He’s
the one I want to play against.”

“He doesn’t have any money,” Arthit says.