The Fourth Watcher (31 page)

F
our hours later Rafferty opens the apartment door and finds himself in the Seven Dwarfs' cave. Little white lights create a rectangle of diamond sparkle to frame the evening sky, darkening through the sliding glass door. Small colored lights—rubies, emeralds, sapphires—have been strung to outline the inside of the front door. Looking around, focusing through the dazzle, he sees that his desk has been cleared and polished, that the dirt worn into the white leather hassock has been scrubbed away, that three new chairs have been crowded around the living-room table. A white candle flickers on his desk, and another gleams on the coffee table, beside a large crumpled plastic bag from Bangkok's new Book Tower.

The room smells like someone is cooking flowers.

And it is empty.

Going farther in, he sees a partial explanation for the fragrance of frying lilies. The counter between the living room and the kitchen is teeming with flowers, enough of them to create an optimistic send-off for a midlevel Mafia don. Beyond the flowers, on the kitchen side of
the counter, is a sloping ziggurat of cookbooks, all open. Rafferty has never seen a cookbook in the apartment. He starts curiously toward them and remembers the Book Tower bag on the table. He gives the living room a second survey.

The door to the bedroom opens, and Rose comes in. She stops at the sight of him, so abruptly that for an instant he thinks she has failed to recognize him. Then her eyes clear, and she comes up to him and kisses his cheek, leaving a faint coolness behind. Rafferty touches it involuntarily and quickly pulls his hand away. Rose's upper lip is damp with perspiration.

This is practically a first. He has seen her weave through a crowded Bangkok sidewalk in the full glare of the sun, carrying Miaow's weight in plastic shopping bags, without popping a bead of moisture. When she does deign to perspire, it's always at the edge of her hairline. He resists the urge to check.

“How's Arthit?” she says, but her eyes are everywhere in the room.

“He's fine. He's amazingly fine.”

He watches her hear the tone of his voice, her mind a mile away, and then put the words together. She gives him the smile that always puddles him where he stands. “That's wonderful. Noi must be so happy.” Then her gaze wanders off again.

“Rose?”

Her eyes come to his, then slide down to take in his clothes. Her lower lip is suddenly between her teeth.

She says, “You have to get dressed.”

He looks down at himself. “I am dressed. I've been outside and everything.”

“I mean
dressed.
” She tugs at his shirt and checks her fingers to make sure the color hasn't come off on them. “Your good clothes.”

“I don't have any good clothes. Since when do we have cookbooks? Have I been complaining about the food?”

“Don't talk about the cookbooks,” she says. “Never say ‘cookbook' to me again.” She goes past him into the kitchen, and he sees that she is dressed entirely in white linen: a flowing, midthigh something that he supposes is a blouse, over a pair of loose pleated slacks. The gold bracelet he gave her hangs on her left wrist. She starts slamming cookbooks closed. Without looking at him, she says, “Tell me you didn't forget.”

“Of course I didn't forget,” he says. “I just don't know why you need cookbooks.”

“Oh, Poke,” she says hopelessly. Then she stops, sparing the last couple of cookbooks in the stack, and stands still for a moment. Turning to him, she opens her arms. He's holding her in an instant, feeling the long arms wrap around him, feeling the cool dampness of her cheek against his, and then all there is in the world is the two of them, trying to press themselves into one.

“They'll be here in ten minutes,” she says. “Your father and Ming Li.”

“The place looks beautiful,” he says. Then he says, “I need a beer.”

“There isn't time.”

“Please, Rose. I can actually drink beer while I get dressed.” He opens the refrigerator and stares openmouthed. Every shelf is full of food: dishes, bowls, pans, even cups have been pressed into service and jammed any old way onto the shelves. “How many people are coming?”

“It's all terrible,” Rose says. “I'm taking these books back tomorrow, every single one of them. I ordered steak from the Barbican. Your father will like steak. You always like steak.”

“My father will love anything you cook,” he says, finally locating a Singha and reaching over several dishes to get to it. “Anyway, you don't want to waste all this.”

“We'll eat it tomorrow. After they leave.”

“Rose,” Rafferty says, popping the can. “My father isn't even going to taste anything. He's more nervous than you are.”

“I'm not nervous,” Rose says nervously. She steps around him and closes the refrigerator with the air of someone drawing a veil over a dicey past. “Your clothes are on the bed. I chose them. I got that stain off your slacks. And he'll love steak.”

He knocks back half the beer. “Listen, I have to tell you something.”

She's halfway out of the room, but she stops. “You mean now?”

“It's about Frank.” And he tells her all of it, about how his father manipulated him, about Irwin Lee. When he is finished, she continues to look at him as though expecting more.

“And?” she finally says.

Rafferty looks at the tension in her body, and he thinks his heart will explode. “And I love you,” he says, giving up. “More than I've ever been able to say.”

“Then make me happy,” she says, spinning the bracelet around her wrist like a twenty-four-karat hula hoop. “Get dressed.”

 

THE DOORBELL RINGS
as he is buttoning his shirt—one he's never seen before—and his stomach muscles tie themselves into an instant knot, but from the sound of Rose's voice it's the delivery from the Barbican. He hears the clatter of things being cleared away and wonders how many kilos of rare beef Rose ordered. He checks himself in the mirror, decides he's still relatively nice-looking, and suddenly thinks of Miaow.

The smiley face is on the door, but he knocks anyway.

“I'm home,” Miaow says, and he opens the door.

She is sitting in front of her mirror, braiding her hair so tightly it looks painful. Her eyes meet his in the mirror. She regards him critically without turning and says, “You look nice. I picked out the shirt at the store.”

“It's beautiful.”

“It's okay,” she says, eyeing it in the mirror.

“Are you all right?”

Now she does turn. She gives him a squint as though he's gone out of focus. “Why wouldn't I be?”

“Well, you know…. I mean, tonight is…It's the first…I mean, if you want to talk about it or anything…” She is still looking at him. “You know?” he adds.

“I got along with Ping,” she says, “and he was going to shoot me. This won't be
that
hard.”

“He's going to love you.”

She purses her mouth and tugs it to one side. “Maybe. Maybe I'll love him, too. Maybe we'll start by just liking each other.”

“You and Rose, the miracle girls,” Rafferty says. “How can I be so lucky?”

“Beats me,” Miaow says. “I put water on my hair. Does it look good?”

“You look beautiful.”

“I hope so,” she says. “It would be nice to be beautiful.” She turns back to the mirror and studies herself. “They'll come soon. Go away now, okay?”

“I'm gone.” He closes the door and, just for a moment, leans against the wall, every muscle in his body slack with love. “We're back,” he says aloud. “We're all back.”

 

WHEN THE DOORBELL
rings again, Rose calls from the kitchen, “You.”

Rafferty takes a breath deep enough to empty the room and opens the door. Frank stands there in an ancient, rumpled tweed sport coat, his right arm clamped rigidly to his body with three bottles of wine beneath it. Ming Li stands beside him, looking as cool and remote as ever, except that she has half of her father's left sleeve knotted in her fist. Her knuckles are paper white. Hanging upside down in her other hand, completely forgotten, is a bouquet of flowers.

Without thinking, Rafferty makes a move to shake his father's hand, sees a spark of something like panic in Frank's eyes, and has a sudden vision of him extending his hand and dropping the wine. So instead he pats his father on the shoulder and says, “Hello, Frank, Ming Li. Give you a hand with those?” and reaches for the bottles.

“Poke,”
Rose says from behind him. He feels her hand on his arm and turns.

Tall and draped in white, she is framed by the colored lights behind her, the guardian spirit of an enchanted cave. Slowly she brings her hands together in a
wai,
raises them to her forehead, and says, “Hello, Father. Hello, sister. Welcome home.”

And steps aside, her head slightly bowed, her hands still high. Frank glances quickly at Poke, licks his lips, and says, “Thank you, Rose.” Without looking up, Ming Li tugs at the fabric of his sleeve, and Frank says, “Hello, son.”

“Dad,” Poke says, the word enormous in his throat. “Ming Li. Please come in.”

As they come through the door, Ming Li gives him a smile that almost blinds him.

I
f any government in the world today needs overthrowing, it's North Korea's. Everything in this book about the country's international counterfeiting activities is true. They pump out currency, cigarettes, and medications—including AIDS “drugs” that do nothing but make the victim retain water so he or she experiences a weight gain. And all of this is to provide a cash flow to enrich a few swine at the top of the pyramid.

A brilliant Stanford graduate thesis by Sheena Chestnut dubbed North Korea “the Sopranos State,” and I recommend it to anyone who wants to know more. Chestnut reveals in considerable detail a nation whose foreign policy is based on thuggery.

The greediest thug, of course, is Kim Jong Il, recently revealed to be the biggest individual consumer of Hennessy Paradis cognac in the world. “Dear Leader” spends somewhere between $650,000 and $800,000 a year on this elite happy juice, which retails in Korea for $630 a bottle.

The average North Korean makes less than $900 each year. The country suffers periodic famines. Millions of North Korean children
display the bloated bellies and stunted bone development associated with severe malnutrition. Meanwhile, the swollen cadres atop the power pyramid live in monarchical luxury.

The teensy (five-feet, two-inch) dictator also sends squads throughout the country to compel especially attractive women and girls, some still in junior high school, to serve in “joy brigades” that provide sexual companionship for ranking Communist Party officials.

The participation of the Chinese triads in North Korean counterfeiting scams is well documented, especially in Macau and the boomtown Special Economic Zones. Banks in Macau and Harbin have been identified by U.S. investigators as complicit in these schemes.

F
irst thanks go to my agent, Bob Mecoy, who spotted several holes in this story from twelve thousand miles away, and to my editor at William Morrow, Marjorie Braman, who has read the book more often than I have and who reshaped it to make it leaner, meaner, and a lot faster.

The story was written in California, Thailand, Cambodia, and China. The people of Southeast Asia are famously hospitable, and I was well and warmly taken care of everywhere. As always, I wrote most of the book in coffeehouses. Thanks to the people at Lollicup in West Los Angeles and the Novel Café in Santa Monica; Coffee World in Bangkok; Mito Café and Coffee Language (great name) in Shenzhen and ChangPing, China; and, in Phnom Penh, the Foreign Correspondents' Club on the riverside and Black Canyon Coffee at Paragon Center.

A waitress at the Mito Café, Ah-Qiu, let me borrow her face so I could give it to Ming Li, and while I was at the Mito, my friend Randell Jackson told me about the ideogram for the name “Lee” that depicts a tree sheltering a child?
Thanks to both of them.

Gratitude also to the people at Apple for the iPod, a boy's best friend
when he's writing in a country where the local pop music is both ubiquitous and (to his ears) unendurable. This time out, Vienna Teng and Aimee Mann were indispensable, as were Bob Dylan (always), Rufus Wainwright (ditto), the phenomenal Fratellis, Emmylou Harris—who could sing in Latvian and still break my heart, Vince Gill, the criminally underrated BoDeans and Gin Blossoms, the Jaynetts (one record, but what a record), KT Tunstall, Kim Gun Mo, Puffy AmiYumi, the ever-essential Kinks, Los Lobos, Richard Thompson, Snow Patrol, and a bunch of others.

I've been remiss in not thanking Chris Lang and Maria Sandamela, who programmed and designed my Web site, www.timothyhallinan.com. They got the whole thing online, looking good, in about three weeks.

Marvin Klotz, Ph.D., showed me by example that it is possible to live a life centered on books and has told me more jokes than anyone else in my life. I've owed him a heartfelt thank-you for years.

And finally, overall inspiration for this book, as for all the others, was provided in more or less infinite amounts by my wife, Munyin Choy.