Breathing Water (32 page)

“Don’t worry. We’ve had the limiter removed from his morphine drip, and the nurse has traded his pain pills for junk. An antifungal medicine, I think. Without the pills he’ll medicate himself out of existence by morning. Kinder that way, really.”

“If there’s an autopsy—”

“Not your business,” the general says, and his tone has stiffened. “You already have more, apparently, on your plate than you can handle. But even if there
is
an autopsy, even if some zealot decides to check the cause of death for a man who was, after all, a terminal-cancer patient, they’ll be expecting to find morphine in his system, won’t they? Worst comes to worst, it’s a compassionate death, maybe a slap on the hand for the supervising doctor.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The announcement.”

“I told Pan early this morning that we’d discuss things further in a couple of weeks. He said I wasn’t in charge.”

“Excuse me?”

“With Porthip dying, he said, there wasn’t anybody who could hold the factory over his head anymore. At least nobody who had actually been part of it. So he said we were no longer running his campaign. He’ll still work with us, he says—he’ll need help when he’s elected—but he thinks he’ll win in a landslide now that the fire can’t come back to haunt him. In fact, he said he was going to use it.”

“How the hell does he propose to do that?”

“Without Porthip, he says, he’s the hero of the fire. What he’s going to do is to get the press together—and you know how they’ll show up, especially after the malaria party—and he’s going to announce his plan to turn the factory into a monument to the people who died there. He’ll talk about how he saw the smoke from the road, about how he tried to save them, show his scars. He’s going to say that’s why he bought the place, so he could consecrate it. He’ll clean it out some and make it safe for the public to visit, and he’s going to carve into the walls the names of the people who died there and turn the big workroom in the front into a gallery, with melted machines and photos of the place after the fire. He’s finding pictures of the people who worked there—while
they were still alive, I mean—and he’s going to put those with the other pictures. And then he’ll announce a grant of five million baht to fund a commission to look into the working conditions of people who do bottom-wage piecework, especially people who come to Bangkok from the northeast. And after all
that
, he’ll close things out by announcing that he’s running for the National Assembly, where he can really do something about these issues.”

“That’s it,” the general says. “
That’s
why he insisted on getting hold of the factory. And it’s brilliant. He’ll have every vote in the northeast. Too bad we can’t work with him.”

“He’s going to make the announcement at the…” Ton trails off, looking at a spot in the air in front of him. His face is suddenly warm.

“At the factory?” the general says.

“Yes, sir.” Ton picks up his cell phone but drops it again. He rapidly flexes the fingers of his free hand, looking down at the phone.

“It would be extremely effective,” the general says. “You wouldn’t be able to count all the votes it would bring. It would probably put me back on the sleeping pills. But thanks to you, thanks to your
farang
, I’ve found an alternative. Have you been following this kid—oh, well, at my age everybody’s a kid—this young man who started out with the sidewalk popcorn machines?”

“I know something about him.”

“Branching out. A couple of guesthouses, some gift shops in the lobbies of hotels and small airports. Got the rights to an American restaurant franchise called Greens. Heard of it?”

“No, sir.”

“Just the usual burgers and junk, but they have some sort of handbook full of policies to make the business greener, you know? More environmentally responsible.”

“Like what?”

“Who cares? Maybe they use the methane from cattle farts to power the stoves. How do I know? Thing is, green is good. Thing is, the kid’s Isaan. Thing is, the kid will listen to reason.”

“But, I mean, with Pan on the ticket—if he’s running against Pan-no matter how good he is, Pan will wallop him, won’t he?”

The general says nothing. In the silence that follows, Ton picks up his cell phone and scrolls down toward Captain Teeth’s number. Then
he stops scrolling and says, “Oh.” He puts the cell phone back on the desk. “I see.”

“And think how the votes would pour in,” the general says, “if he were stepping into the shoes of a martyr.”

Ton says, “Yes.”

“Then we’re finished?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good work,” the general says. “Without your
farang
I never would have looked around.” The general clears his throat. “You
can
get your hands on him, right? Not that he could prove anything, but just for neatness’ sake.”

“Yes, sir. I know where his wife is.”

“Good, good. You’re a valuable asset, Ton.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The general hangs up.

Ton puts the phone back into the the drawer and replaces the false bottom. He closes the drawer and realizes he forgot to put the files back, so he swears between his teeth, opens the drawer again, and drops the files into it. He is conscious of a prickling of sweat at his hairline.

He wishes he could talk to his wife.

When he’s finished straightening the files, he sits looking down at the open drawer for a full minute. Then he picks up his phone, scrolls the rest of the way down, and presses “call.” He waits, drumming the fingers of his left hand on the desk. Then he says, “Listen. I need one of them, either the woman or the girl, to be able to talk. It may be the only way to bring Rafferty in. But here’s the important thing: I can’t figure why they’re at the factory unless Pan’s there.”

“Okay,” Captain Teeth says.

“If he’s there, take him out.”

“You mean—”

“You know what I mean. Take him out, and take out anybody who sees anything. Just leave me one of those females in a condition to talk on the phone.”

Captain Teeth says, “You’re the boss.”

“And one more thing. If Pan goes down tonight, we have to talk about what happens to the guys who are with you.”

“Well,” Captain Teeth says, “I’m not related to any of them.”

T
he generator sounds like it has a respiratory disease.

It sputters, coughs, hiccups. Then it makes a phlegmy, ratcheting, throat-clearing sound for ten seconds or so, and the whole pathology starts over.

It’s so loud, Boo thinks, that he could ride in on horseback and no one would hear him.

The big black Mercedes sits empty at the end of the cracked drive, a car-shaped hole in the darkness, its motor ticking as it cools. Boo keeps himself to the darkest areas, moving from the shadow of one bush to another to avoid the thin, chilly-looking moonlight. The ground underfoot is littered with chunks of concrete, jagged-edged, irregular, heavy enough to pitch him facedown if he trips on one. Spiderwebs lace the spaces between the weeds, fat spiders straddling the centers, waiting patiently for blood. Boo isn’t particularly afraid of spiders, but he doesn’t like walking face-first into one.

And the place smells as if the hair of a million women was burned inside.

Boo can stroll the darkest, narrowest alley in Bangkok on a moonless night without so much as a bump in his pulse rate, but this weedy
field with its blackened, abandoned factory makes the hair on his arms stand up. The generator goes into a paroxysm of coughing, and suddenly there is light on the bottom floor of the building.

Or is there? The interior is so black that there’s nothing for the light to bounce off; it’s like looking into an infinite space. If it weren’t for the long rectangles of illumination spilling onto the weeds through the doors and windows and shining on the newly visible profile of the Mercedes, Boo’s not sure he’d even register the light. But he knows one thing: Light or no light, the place doesn’t feel any friendlier.

With the noise of the generator clattering in his ears, he doesn’t hear the person behind him, and when the hand lands on his arm, he goes straight up into the air and comes down facing the opposite way, one hand clutching a five-inch knife that’s normally sheathed inside his right front pocket. When he sees who it is, he gasps in relief several times and then knots her T-shirt in his hand to drag her down into a crouch, out of sight from the building.

Da says, “We have to leave.”

“Be quiet. Rafferty’s coming with the cops. We’ll argue then.”

“Now,” she says. “We have to leave now.”

Boo looks back at the building, sees nothing inside the big black room, just the sharp-edged rectangles of light falling through the door and windows. He registers that the windows are barred with thick rods of what looks like iron. “Why?” he whispers. “Why do we have to leave?”

“This place is full of ghosts,” Da says. “They’re everywhere.”

“Don’t be silly,” Boo says, feeling the goose bumps pop out on his arms.

Da says, and her voice is shaking, “They’re
on fire
.”

“Well, yeah,” Boo says, keeping his own voice steady. “Look at the place. Got burned to shit.”

“Please. These are not ghosts you can talk to. They want blood. They’ve been waiting for blood.”

“Go across the street,” Boo says. “They’ll stay here. Ghosts don’t just wander around. I need to see what’s happening in there.”

“You have to come with me,” Da says. “I can’t have Peep here. If we stay, there will be blood. There
will
be.”

“Then go,
go
. Get out of here. Get Peep across the street.”

Da starts to reply, but her voice splinters into “Ohhhhhhh” as a figure inside walks past the door.

“Shut
up
,” Boo hisses. “It’s just the fat guy, Pan. The little one’s got to be around somewhere. He was driving. He’s not in the car, so he’s somewhere else. Look, he’s only a guy.” Then he puts a hand on her shoulder and says, barely louder than a thought, “Don’t move.”

Dr. Ravi comes through the door of the factory and picks his way down the driveway to the Mercedes. He opens the trunk and leans in, and when he straightens up, he has something coiled over one shoulder and bulky objects dangling from each hand. Inside the factory door, he puts down the things in his hands and pulls the coil off his shoulder and drops it to the floor.

“Lights,” Boo says. “And cord. Electrical cord.”

But Dr. Ravi is already on his way back to the car. This time he removes long pieces of something that looks like pipe. Once inside again, he takes two of the lengths of pipe and begins to screw them together. Then Pan appears at the door and picks up the long coil of electrical cord. He unloops it, backing away until he is out of sight.

“What are they doing?” Boo whispers. “Are they going to light the place? And why are they doing this themselves? Pan’s rich. There must be a hundred people who could do this for him.” He squeezes Da’s shoulder. “Go now. Tell the kid at the gate—his name is Tee—to come up here. I want him to use that video camera.”

Da puts both hands on his arm. “I’m telling you. You should go, too.”

“Ghosts leave me alone,” Boo says. “I’ve come too close to dying, too often. They look at me and know it’s just a matter of time.”

“You don’t know anything,” Da says furiously. He hears the brush rustling for a couple of seconds, and then the generator drowns out the sounds of her movement.

A moment later Pan appears, pushing something black and shapeless across the floor, right to left. Things—pieces of it—fall off as he shoves, and he kicks the fragments out of the way. And then he reappears, moving in the opposite direction, picking up things as he goes, and ten or twelve heartbeats later he carries an armload of shapeless objects past the door. Whatever he’s arranging, it’s being set up on the side of the room that’s to the left of the door.

Boo looks over his shoulder just in time to see Da slip through the gate, heading across the street. Other than the gate, there seems to be no way out; as far as Boo can see, the fence, at least three meters tall, surrounds the overgrown plot of ground on which the burned factory is centered. He’s thinking,
Keep the path to the gate clear
, when he hears the boy who’d been stationed at the gate, Tee, coming up behind him. Without looking back, Boo says, “You stay here. I’m going to check the window to the left over there.”

Tee says, “I don’t like it here.”

“Well,” Boo says, “you’ve got a lot of company. Try to keep me in sight, but don’t let them see you.”

“Yeah, but…”

“But what?”

“But I don’t want to be here alone.”

“That damn Da,” Boo says. “Ghosts everywhere.” He straightens partway and looks down at Tee. “You going to be okay?” It’s more a threat than a question.

Tee averts his eyes. “I guess.”

“Won’t be long.”

As Boo starts to move to his left, he sees Dr. Ravi, who’s still standing in the doorway, unfold three legs at the bottom of one of the pipe-like objects to create a tall tripod. He bends down and picks up one of the lights and starts to screw it onto the top of the tripod. He has to stand on tiptoe to tighten the light. He handles the objects clumsily. They’re obviously unfamiliar to him, and assembling them fully engages his attention.

At the edge of the driveway, Boo pauses and steadies his breathing. The driveway is about fifteen feet wide, and with the Mercedes behind him there’s no cover at all. He waits until Dr. Ravi turns his back to the door, picks up the light, now securely atop the pole, and carries it left, out of sight. Then Boo crouches low, takes one last look at the door and the window, and sprints, bent almost double, over the cracked asphalt. He has made it most of the distance across when his toe catches on the edge of a fractured, uptilted piece of paving. He windmills his arms, he tries desperately to find a point of balance, but he was moving too fast, and there’s no question. He’s going down.

At the last possible second, he realizes he’s going to land on his
elbows, and he pulls them back to avoid breaking them, and he hits flat on his stomach. The grunt that the impact forces out of him can be heard even over the generator. He remains absolutely still, holding his breath, his eyes glued to the doorway, wishing fiercely for invisibility, and he hears someone inside say, “Somebody’s out there.”

And then something cold and wet touches his arm.

“WHY DR. RAVI?”
Arthit asks.

The taxi is absolutely rocketing now that the densest parts of the city are behind them, the driver using flashing headlights, a nasal horn, and a well-oiled accelerator pedal to muscle the rest of the world out of the way.

“Process of elimination,” Rafferty says as the landscape flashes past. “What it comes down to is that nobody else knows as much about what’s happening in Pan’s life, no one else is in daily contact with him. Let’s say Dr. Ravi applied for the job because he thought, like a lot of people, that Pan was a great man.”

“He probably could have been,” Arthit says.

“Pan?” the driver asks. “You mean the one with all the money? What a guy.”

Arthit says, “I rest my case.”

“And maybe one reason Dr. Ravi wanted the job was that it hadn’t escaped his attention that Pan could have a significant political future,” Rafferty says. “And let’s say that Dr. Ravi has unexpectedly democratic sentiments and he thinks that Pan might be the person who could finally give the poor a say in how the country is run.”

“I’d vote for him,” the driver says.

“Just drive,” Kosit says.

“I’d like to be next in line for his girls, too,” the driver says.

“Here’s the thing,” Arthit says to the driver. “Shut up and drive, or when we get there, I’ll shoot you.”

Rafferty looks over at him, and Arthit shrugs.

“Cops,” the driver grumbles.

“And get us there in ten minutes,” Arthit says, “and you’ll make an extra five thousand baht.”

The driver says, “Driving.”

“So he gets the job, Dr. Ravi does,” Rafferty says, “and the first thing he does is go through everything in the files, probably including some stuff he shouldn’t have seen at all. As he told me, he’s the media director. He needs to know whether there are any skeletons in the closet. He’s expecting one or two—nobody gets as rich as Pan without a few skeletons folded away here and there—but he’s not prepared for a hundred and twenty-one of them.”

Arthit thinks about it for a moment. “How do you know he found out about that?”

Rafferty also thinks for a second, then shakes his head. “Actually, I don’t. But he knew what Snakeskin was.”

Arthit says, “Mmmmm.”

“So let’s say he
didn’t
know about what happened at the factory. But the deal with Ton, with Snakeskin, is happening in real time, in the office Pan shares with Dr. Ravi, and Dr. Ravi found out about it.”

He breaks off as Arthit touches his knee and lifts his eyebrows at the driver, whose eyes keep going to the rearview mirror.

“And that information…um, confounded Dr. Ravi’s expectations, and all of a sudden his political allegiances shifted. I mean, drastically. Whether he knew about the fire or not, he suddenly realizes that the archangel is in bed with the archfiend. So Dr. Ravi decides to use his privileged position to work
against
you-know-who’s ever getting elected to anything, and here comes the last thing on earth he wants to see: some hack writer, and a
farang
to boot, all set to crank out a biography of the no-longer-great man.”

“Why would he think the book would be sympathetic?”

“My fault. I kicked him out of the office before I told Pan about the threats from the other side, before we came to our understanding. When the door opens, half an hour later, Pan and I are getting along great, so great that I’ve been invited to the malaria thing, and then Pan’s lending my wife diamonds worth millions, and I’m apparently allowed to drop by whenever I want. So sure, Dr. Ravi figures the book will be a whitewash, a fan letter. I’m going to turn Pan into Gandhi.”

Arthit scratches his head. “So it was Dr. Ravi who warned you not to write the book.”

“Yeah. I don’t think he was actually going to carry out the threats. He thought I’d scare off easily, and I would have if it hadn’t been for
Ton. But he got some people who are
really
serious about their politics to keep an eye on me, and when he told them to discourage me for a second or third time, they went a little overboard.”

Arthit glances at the bandaged hand. “I’d say so.”

“I’d like to keep listening,” the driver says, “but we’re almost there. It’s the next right.”