The Fourth Watcher (12 page)

T
he bar is fashionably dim. The same authority that decrees that casinos should be bright apparently mandates that bars should be dim. This one is dim enough that the street outside, visible through the open door, is a source of light even at a few minutes before midnight.

“Walk back the cat,” Arthit says. He seems to be talking to his reflection, partially visible behind the row of bottles, most of which, in defiance of their fancy labels, contain cheap generic whiskey.

Rafferty has switched to club soda, much to the amusement of the female bartender. “That's a striking image,” he says. “What the hell does it mean?”

Arthit puts down his second glass of so-called Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks. Like many Asians, he lacks an enzyme that metabolizes alcohol, and his face is a shade of crimson that would fascinate a cardiologist. “You obviously don't read much espionage fiction.”

“I don't read much of anything that was written after 1900. If you want to be dazzled, ask me about Anthony Trollope.”

“I always loved that name.” Arthit raps his wedding ring on the edge of his glass. Rafferty wonders if he is checking to make sure he can still hear. “‘Walking back the cat' is a technique for unraveling an operation.” He lifts the glass and drinks. “First, of course, you have to assume it's an operation.”

Rafferty glances around. As far as he can determine through the gloom, the other six customers seem to be absorbed in their own conversations. “It's certainly something,” he says. “Even in counterfeit money, thirty thousand bucks is a lot of simoleons.”

“‘Simoleons'? Anthony Trollope used the term ‘simoleons'?”

“Not often,” Rafferty concedes.

“Here's how many simoleons it actually is,” Arthit says. “Let's say you're a customer of whoever is making these things—”

“The North Koreans, Arnold Prettyman says.”

“Arnold? You're talking to Arnold again? It's a good thing you're not on parole.”

“One takes information where one can get it.”

“Well, Arnold's right. So. Let's say you want to get your hands on some of these things. You can buy a North Korean hundred-dollar bill—in bulk, of course—for anywhere from sixty to seventy-five dollars, depending on market forces.”

“For example.”

Arthit tilts his head to the left. “How badly the North Koreans need cash. How much trouble they're having getting the things into circulation. Fluctuations in the price of plutonium. How low Kim Jong Il's cognac reserves are.” He raps the glass again, and this time the bartender looks over at him. Arthit raises a finger and points it, pistol style, at Rafferty's soda glass, which contains nothing but a straw and a slice of lime. “So figure it out. Take a middle value, say seventy dollars to the hundred. Seven hundred to the thousand.”

“Jiminy,” Rafferty says. “Twenty-two thousand dollars.”

“Very impressive. Somebody spent twenty-two thousand dollars, or passed up on the opportunity to
make
twenty-two thousand dollars, to put that bag in Peachy's drawer.”

“I see the distinction.”

“That's a substantial investment. So to walk back the cat, you ask yourself a few questions. Who would be willing to make that investment?
Why? Why now? Why Peachy? Why an obscure domestic-service agency in a crappy corner of Pratunam?”

“Not so crappy.” Rafferty's new glass of soda arrives, floating in on a big smile from the bartender, and he sips it and feels his tongue try to roll itself up. It's tonic water. He starts to send it back and thinks,
What the hell. Try something new.
He returns the smile and takes another swallow. It tastes like malaria medicine.

“You know what I mean,” Arthit says. “If you're going to set off a bomb, why do it there?”

“You're smart when you're drunk.”

“This isn't drunk. This is mellow.
Drunk
is when I fall sideways off the stool.”

“Let's arrange a signal, so I can get out of the way.”

“Who and why,” Arthit says. “Work from what we know and focus on who and why.”

“If we're going to walk back the cat,” Rafferty says, “we have to start with yesterday, when those maids took the bad bills to the bank. Actually, we have to go back further, to when Peachy got the stuff in the first place.”

Arthit says, “Bingo.”

“Right,” Rafferty says. His mind is working so fast he doesn't even taste the tonic as he swallows it. “We've said from the beginning that this would be all over as soon as Elson goes to the bank where Peachy got the money.”

“And that would be?” Arthit asks.

“On Monday.”

“Coincidence?” Arthit asks, and then lowers his voice and says dramatically,
“I don't think so.”

“So the
why,
” Rafferty says, “is to keep Elson from backtracking to the bank.”

“Sure. All this fake money, right there in the desk. Even if she did go to the bank, so what? The bills she gave to the maids came out of the bag.”

“That leaves the who,” Rafferty says. “Or, maybe more important, it leaves the how.”

“What how? Some master keys or a good set of picks, a paper bag full of money, an open desk drawer.”

“How the
who
knew to put it there.”

Arthit swivels his stool back and forth for a moment. “
That
how,” he says. He picks up his glass and puts it down again. “This line of speculation leads to some very uncomfortable territory.”

“The wood of the wolves,” Rafferty says. Then he says, “But still. Wherever the cat goes.”

Arthit has discovered that his stool squeaks when he turns more than six or seven inches to the left, and he plays with it for a moment, to Rafferty's annoyance. Satisfied with the amount of noise he has made, he comes back to face the bar. “There were four people in your apartment. Elson, my two colleagues, and the girl—What's her name?”

“Fon.”

“Right, Fon. And Fon's been in jail ever since, so I suppose we can cross her off the list.” He takes an ambitious pull off the amber whatever-it-is in his glass and says, “And it doesn't matter whether the someone put the money there himself or had someone else do it.”

“Not in the least.”

“Of course,” Arthit says carefully, “there's always the possibility that Peachy put it there herself.”

“No,” Rafferty says. “There isn't.”

“Let's just follow it for a second. She hands out the bad bills, right?”

“Right. So?”

“And the girls get caught. She's stuck with the story about the bank, and she knows it won't hold up, so she grabs her bag of pretty paper from home or wherever she keeps it and shows up at your place, all distraught. ‘Look what I found,' she says. And here we are, thinking about other people.”

“Never in a million years.”

Arthit wipes condensation from his glass with his index finger and dries it on his pants. “She's had some problems, did you know that?”

“They're hard to miss. She's got pretensions to gentility, a bad marriage, a business that was going on the rocks.”

“She's a gambler, Poke. She lost a small fortune playing the horses. It almost cost her—and her husband—everything. She was into the loan sharks for more than I make in a year.” He looks down at the wet smear on his trousers. “In fact, it cost her Prem, her husband.”

“He left her,” Rafferty says. “She told Rose about it.”

“Whatever she told Rose,” Arthit says, “it wasn't true. Prem killed himself.”

Rafferty buries his face in his hands. “Oh, Jesus. Poor Peachy.”

“I could have kicked myself when I asked about her family. I wasn't thinking straight.”

“And you know about her husband how?”

“I checked,” Arthit says. “When Rose went into business with her, I did a little background research.”

“I see.” Rafferty looks down at his tonic water, focusing on the lonely little slice of lime, and Peachy's face, hidden beneath its mask of makeup, floats into view. He flags the bartender. “This is tonic,” he says. “Could you please dump some gin into it?”

 

“IF YOU REALLY
thought it was Peachy,” Rafferty says, “you wouldn't be here.”

They have moved to a booth, mostly because Rafferty couldn't stand hearing Arthit's stool squeak one more time.

“I wouldn't?” Arthit is drunk enough to be leaning forward on both elbows. Rafferty has forcibly switched him to soda, then tasted it to make sure nothing has been slipped into it while he wasn't looking.

“What you kept saying at the apartment. ‘I shouldn't be here.' You must have said it half a dozen times.”

Arthit tastes his soda and gives it an Easter Island grimace. “I never claimed to be interesting.”

“You're here because you don't trust those cops.” He watches his friend's face. “Or Elson.”

Arthit looks around the bar as if he hopes there will be somebody else there to talk to. Then he says, “Peachy's too hapless. Too distracted by her life. She wouldn't have the faintest idea where to get that paper. Also, the business is finally beginning to pay off. This would not be a good time for her to embark on a life of crime.”

“Then what was all that stuff—”

“It's a
case,
” Arthit says, baring his upper teeth. “It's a pretty convincing case, if you don't know Peachy. It's the case I think they're going to try to make on Monday.”

“Ah,” Rafferty says.

“And there's no way it's not going to splash onto Rose.”

A little chill of pure dread runs through Rafferty's chest and is immediately replaced by fury. “I'm going to see that it doesn't.”

“So,” Arthit says, rubbing his eyes. “It's Elson or the two cops, or someone they talked to.”

“Too many. We've only got until Monday.” Rafferty looks over at Arthit, red-faced and sweating opposite him. “Thanks for not leaving.”

“There, there,” Arthit says. “Let's not get emotional.”

“But if this backfires, it could be serious for you.”

“No. If this backfires, it'll be fatal.” He slides the glass of soda toward the center of the table. “Could I replace this with something that contains an active ingredient?”

“It's your hangover.” Rafferty flags the bartender. “Black Label?”

“Black seems appropriate,” Arthit says.

“One more Black for my unwise friend,” Rafferty says. Then, to Arthit, he says, “Go away. Finish your drink and distance yourself. You weren't at my apartment, we didn't go to any bars. I haven't seen you since this afternoon.”

Arthit is watching the bartender make his drink. Spotting him in the mirror, she adds an extra slug. “And walk away from all this fun?”

“You have to decide,” Rafferty says, “whether you want to hear what I'm about to say.”

“If I wanted to go deaf, I would have done it earlier.”

“Okay. We can't figure out the who by Monday, but whoever they are, I think I can fuck up their plan pretty thoroughly.”

“Do tell.” The drink arrives, and Arthit looks like he wants to kiss it.

Rafferty tells him.

“My, my,” Arthit says. “That's genuinely devious. And you think you can do it by Sunday night?”

Rafferty shrugs with an indifference he doesn't feel. “I have to.”

“Is all this running around tomorrow going to give you time to go on an errand with me?”

“Oh, sure. My time is your time. What did you have in mind?”

“I thought we might crack open Agent Elson's shell. Just a little. Sort of give us an idea of what's inside it.”

“How?” Rafferty's cell phone rings, and he says, “Hold that thought,” and answers it.

“Poke?” It is Prettyman's voice, and it sounds strained to the point of strangulation. “Get your ass over here.
Right now.
”

W
hat the
fuck
have you gotten me into?” Prettyman demands, leaning so close that Rafferty can see the gray in his Ming the Merciless goatee. Prettyman's well-established distaste for personal proximity is no match for the urgency he feels. Rafferty has seen the man under pressure before—in fact, Prettyman's approach to life seems to be to create pressure and then cave in to it—but this is something new. The intensity even reaches his eyes.

And that makes Rafferty very uncomfortable. During their acquaintance Prettyman has revealed few admirable qualities, but he doesn't frighten easily. At the moment he is scared half to death. They are in the back room of the Nana Plaza bar, and the bass from the sound system thumps in two-four time through the wall, synchronized approximately with Rafferty's heartbeat. The room is empty except for the table at which they sit, the four chairs that have gathered around it for company, a wall full of framed photographs, and a Plexiglas box padlocked on a black stand. Beneath the box, displayed like an Academy Award, is a SIG-Sauer nine-millimeter automatic.

“I gather you had a nibble,” Rafferty says.

“A
nibble
? It was like sinking a hook in fucking Moby-Dick.” Prettyman shows a lot of teeth. It is not a smile. “First person I called,
wham.
All I did was mention the name, and I thought the guy was going to come through the line and grab my tongue. So I think, Whoa, slow down, and I get off the line. And three other guys call me within fifteen minutes.” Prettyman hears the pitch of his own voice and sits back, eyeing the room as though he wishes it were much larger and, perhaps, made of steel. “A number I didn't think anybody had,” he says, more quietly if not more calmly. Despite the coolness of the room, his shirt is patchy with sweat, and not just in the obvious places.

Rafferty gives him a minute in the name of tact and then says, “What kind of guys?”

“Not your problem.” Prettyman seems to be regretting his volatility. He makes a show of straightening his cuffs. A cup of coffee toted in from the bar is cooling in front of him untouched, and a paint-thinner smell announces the brandy it's been laced with.

“It certainly
is
my problem, Arnold. Look, I'm not asking for names and addresses. Americans, Chinese, Thais, military, diplomats, spooks, cops, gangsters—what?”

“All of the above,” Prettyman says in the satisfied tone of someone who predicted disaster and turned out to be right. “And with a lot of weight—very high-density guys.” He drums the table with his fingernails. “What are those little stars called? The ones that are so dense?”

“Little dense stars?” Rafferty guesses. His heart isn't in it.

“
Dwarf
stars,” Prettyman says. “A cubic inch of a dwarf star weighs as much as the earth. Think dwarf star. That kind of density.”

“And what did these very heavy guys tell you?” Rafferty lifts his own coffee, pretends to sip. His hand is not completely steady, so he puts it on the table again.

Prettyman is still buying time by adjusting his clothes. “From one perspective they didn't tell me shit. No answers, not even rude ones. What they wanted was to know what
I
knew. From another perspective, of course, they told me quite a bit.”

“For example.”

“The whole world wants to get its teeth into Frank Rafferty. Way it sounded, they'd chew your father up and fight over the scraps.”

Rafferty's initial doubts about involving Prettyman suddenly intensify. He pushes his chair back and gets up, feeling the other man's eyes follow him. Three or four steps carry him to the wall with the photos on it. A younger Prettyman stares out from each of them: in a jungle, wearing fatigues; centered and fuzzy in an obvious telephoto shot, talking to a woman on some Middle European street; posed dramatically in front of the Kremlin in a trench coat that might as well have
SPY
stenciled on the back. The others are all variations on the theme: spook at work.

“I didn't know you guys liked to have your picture taken so much,” Rafferty says. “This looks like the wall at a local chamber of commerce.”

“Fuck the pictures,” Prettyman says.

“So they're eager,” Rafferty says, still studying the photos. “So they've got a lot of weight. Puts you in an interesting position.”

“Puts me right up the fecal creek,” Prettyman says. Then he hears the implication. “You don't actually think I'd shop you, Poke?” Rafferty turns to see him widen his eyes, which succeeds only in making them bigger. They're still the eyes of someone who could spot an opportunity through a sheet of lead.

“Please, Arnold,” Poke says.

“And even if I would,” Prettyman says immediately, “I don't actually know anything, do I? I'm the guy in the middle, the one all these wide-track trucks think has the marbles, and I don't even know if the guy is really your father.”

“Of course you do. There's no way you haven't learned that much.”

“This does not make me happy, Poke,” Prettyman says. He turns his coffee cup ninety degrees and then back again, and wipes sweat from the side of his neck. “It's not the kind of attention I want to attract. I'm a settled man here, retired from the Company, whatever you may think. The world has passed me by, and that's fine. A man at my time of life doesn't need the adrenaline jolts I liked twenty years ago. A little money, the occasional girl, regular habits. The same pillow every evening. A house I can leave in the morning knowing I'll be coming back to it at the end of the day. No more night crawls, no more tracking boring people across boring cities and then discovering that they're not so boring after all, that in fact they'd like to kill you.”

Infected by Prettyman's anxiety, Rafferty does his own scan of the room, wondering whether there's a microphone somewhere. He lifts the pictures, crosses the room and looks under the table, comes up, catches Prettyman studying him, and says, “Have you left the bar tonight, Arnold?”

Prettyman hesitates, just his normal disinclination to part with information. “I went home for dinner.”

“After you made the calls?”

“Some of them. I made more from home.”

“And when you left here, or when you came back, were you followed?”

The question makes Prettyman shift in his chair, sliding from side to side as though smoothing down a lump in the cushion. He licks his lips. “That book you were going to write,” he says. “How good did you get at spotting a tail?”

“Obviously not too good.” He sits again. “I still smell like an issue of
Vanity Fair.
”

“Then you know,” Prettyman says. “It's not easy. Give me half a dozen good people and I could follow Santa all the way around the world without tipping him off.” He blinks a couple of times and blots his upper lip with the side of his index finger. “But I don't think so. For one thing, no one knows where I live.”

“They didn't know the phone number either.”

“No,” Prettyman says grimly. “And don't think I'm not keeping that in mind.”

“Because of course you
do
know something, don't you? You know that Frank's in Bangkok and that I'm in contact with him. You know where I live. Not exactly a Chinese wall. You've probably operated on less.”

Prettyman lays both hands flat on the table, as though to rise. “Are you back to that? Suggesting that I'd sell you?”

Rafferty shoves the table a few inches toward him, trapping Prettyman's knees beneath it. “You're on the wet spot, aren't you? If they tried the stick, which it sounds like they did, there's also the carrot. Probably a whole bunch of carrots if, as you say, they want him so much. Especially if there's some sort of contest to take the first bite.”

“The discussion didn't get that far.” Prettyman settles, and finally
drinks some of the coffee, his eyes on the room again. “Anyway, I don't sell people.”

It would be silly to argue. “What time did you make the first call?”

A moment of elaborate consideration that Rafferty automatically discounts as a dodge. Prettyman has a chronograph implanted in his cerebellum, running several time zones simultaneously. Finally he says, “What time did you and I talk?”

“I don't know. Nine, nine-thirty. And why are you stalling, Arnold?”

“Right after that.” Prettyman lowers his voice, imparting a confidence even though they are alone in the room. “You wanted answers, Poke. I got right on it.”

“Answers from China,” Rafferty says.

Prettyman starts to answer, hesitates, and says, “I didn't start in China.”

Rafferty waits for more and then asks, “Bangkok?”

Prettyman nods so slightly that Rafferty can barely see it.

“So let's say ten. Sound about right?”

He gets an equivocal shake of the hand, side to side.
“Más o menos.”

“And then the phone started to ring.”

“The people in China didn't seem to care what time it was. They were too interested.”

“And did you mention me? They must have put some pressure on you.”

An upraised palm. “
Poke.
I wouldn't—”

“So you say, Arnold, and naturally I believe you. I'm just giving you a chance to convince me.”

“Think about it, Poke. Even if I were willing to sell your father, which of course I'm not, would I lead them to you? Let's suppose, just for discussion's sake, that I'd entertain the idea. I mean, it's preposterous—” He waits for Rafferty to agree and then plunges ahead. “But just to move the talk along, let's say I would. If I give you to them, they don't need me.”

“That has a certain logic. Then again, if that's all you have—me, I mean—there might be a price for that. Was there?”

After a pause almost too short to measure, Prettyman says, “You think too much, Poke.” He sounds like Rose. “As long as you've lived
here, I'm surprised. Everything isn't logic, you know. Sooner or later you have to trust your feelings, your instincts.”

Rafferty does not explain that his instincts are what inspired the question.

Prettyman lets the silence stretch out before speaking. “I can understand why you'd be concerned. With your family and all.”

“I'm sure you can.”

“Maybe I can help,” Prettyman says, his eyes floating toward the ceiling. “I've got more experience than you do.”

“That's swell of you Arnold, but I think I've got it covered.”

Prettyman nods. “Fine, fine,” he says. “Good to hear it.”

“When you call them back—”

“Hold it,” Prettyman says with some urgency. “Let's not operate under a misunderstanding. I'm going right back into my little hole. This kind of weight I don't need.”

“And you think they're just going to forget you called? Say, ‘Oh, that Arnold, what a tease.' You duck out of sight and they're going to send a regiment after you.”

Prettyman does something with his mouth that, on a child, would be a pout. “I know what I'm doing, Poke.”

“They want Frank, and it's obviously not just a whim. You make one call in Bangkok, middle of the night, and the long-distance lines start humming all the way to China. Heavyweights, as you say. Working late, just for you. Dialing a secret number, one they shouldn't have. These are not people you can wave off, Arnold: ‘Sorry, it's some other Frank Rafferty.' Either they're going to come after you now or they're going to come after you later. They've probably already bought their tickets. Not to mention the ones you talked to in Bangkok.
They're
already here.”

Across the table Prettyman blinks away perspiration that has run down his forehead and into his eyes. Rafferty finds that he feels sorry for the man. He should have mentioned the triads.

But he hadn't. “We both need the same thing,” he continues. “Information. You pretend to play with them, keep them busy for a few days, and get whatever you can. That way you won't be picking up that nice pillow you go home to every night to see whether somebody put a scorpion under it, and when we get back together, we'll have a better
idea what we're up against.” He waits, and Prettyman's eyes slide left, toward the door. Rafferty knocks sharply on the table. “And if you don't play, Arnold, or if you sell me and my family out, I'll get through it somehow, and when I do, I'll come after you and kill you myself. Just, as you say, so we're not operating under a misunderstanding.”

Prettyman's eyes go very small, and he puts his hands in his lap. Rafferty knows he is wishing he had a gun there. The one in the plastic box is too far away.

“So, Arnold,” Rafferty says, shoving his chair back. “Looks like we've both got a problem.”