Book Excerpt - A Nail Through the Heart

The following is an excerpt from the book A Nail Through the Heart
by Timothy Hallinan
Published by William Morrow; July 2007;$24.95US/$31.50CAN; 978-0-06-125580-9
Copyright © 2007 Timothy Hallinan

The Story: Poke Rafferty is an American expatriate living in Bangkok and the author of a number of “rough travel” books aimed at young, hip travelers who want to go off — way off — the usual tourist paths. He came to Bangkok to write the third book in the series, Looking for Trouble in Thailand, and falls in love with the city and the Thai people, two of them in particular: a former Patpong go-go dancer named Rose, with whom he now lives off and on, and whom he wants to marry; and a wary eight-year-old former street child named Miaow, whom he is trying formally to adopt.

The adoption process for Miaow is complicated and expensive, and to offset the expenses not too long ago, Poke wrote a piece for a magazine in which he demonstrated that virtually all the “missing” Western men in Thailand had gone missing voluntarily and were living very happily somewhere in the Kingdom. The article brought him a young Australian woman whose uncle has disappeared. This quest in turn leads him to a rundown mansion on the banks of the Chao Phraya River and a mysterious older woman — much feared, if others’ reactions to her are to be trusted — named Madame Wing. Poke is now in the house and about to meet Madame Wing for the first time.

***

The silence is pierced by a thin, insistent squealing from somewhere in the house. Rafferty backs away from the fragment of temple wall and seats himself in the armchair. The sound grows louder, and a woman comes around the corner and into view. She is tiny and angular, her sharp joints folded batlike into a wheelchair that is too big for her. The chair stops in the doorway, without entering the room, and the squealing stops with it.

She regards him without expression. For a moment he actually wonders if she is blind, simply directing her eyes where she knows the armchair will be.

“Madame Wing,” he says, just to break the silence.

Her chin comes up a quarter of an inch, and all the planes of her face shift. Her eyes actually register him for the first time. She is thin to the point of being gaunt, the bones of her face as sharp as a Cubist painting, the skull slowly surfacing beneath the flesh. The hands grasping the rubber wheels are all knuckles. The skin stretched over them has turned a peculiar bruised-looking purple.

“You came,” she says with a hint of satisfaction. The voice, low and rough, scrapes Rafferty’s ears. Despite the grandeur of her home, there is nothing refined about the way she sounds. She rolls herself a foot or so into the room. The wheelchair squeals again.

“You should get Jeeves to oil that thing.”

She stops the chair’s motion and regards him coldly. He has been regarded coldly before — he thinks of himself as an expert at being regarded coldly — but this is something entirely new. She looks at him as he might look at a snake coiled on his pillow. “His name is Pak, and you do not tell me what to do.”

“Just a suggestion.”

“Not ever,” she says. Now that he can see her eyes more clearly, he wishes he could not. They are extraordinarily luminous eyes, but the light in them seems all to be reflected. They have the shine of an animal that can see in the dark. He can see the white all the way around the circles of her irises. “You have questions to ask me before I come to my business. Ask them.”

Her business? Rafferty does want any part of this woman’s business, whatever it is. “You had a maid here,” he says. “She may know something about a man I’m trying to find.”

She draws herself up in the chair. It makes her seem both larger and heavier, despite her apparent frailty. “What man?”

“An Australian named–”

“No,” she says, closing the subject. She sits back. “I know nothing of Australians.”

“Actually,” he says, “it’s the maid you can probably help me with.” He holds up the note from Bangkok Domestics. “You wrote a letter about her.”

She extends a skeletal hand, a knot of knuckles and rings. It is absolutely still. Whatever health problems she may have, none of them causes her hands to tremble.

Rafferty begins to unfold the letter, but she gives the hand a peremptory shake and he finds himself getting up to give it to her. “Sit,” she says, the moment she has it. She does not look up to see if he does as he is told.

As she unfolds the letter, he gets a chance to look at her without having to face those unsettling eyes. Her hair, still mostly black, is pulled back into a bun so tight it looks like it hurts. The emaciated face is dark but not heavily lined, and Rafferty revises his estimate of her age. At first sight he thought seventy. Now he thinks she could be anywhere from fifty to sixty.

“This girl,” she says at last, precisely refolding the letter. “She is of no account.”

“She may have information I need.”

She drops the letter into her lap. “Why should I care?”

“Not a reason in the world. You said you’d see me, so I thought–”

“I do not care what you thought. The girl was dismissed because she could not accept discipline. I have no idea where she went.”

“How long did she work here before you fired her?”

The gaze she gives him says the question is an impertinence. “Seven weeks, eight weeks.”

“If you fired her, why did you write her a letter of reference?”

“Why does that matter?”

“It’s a natural question. The letter got her hired by someone else, and now that person is missing, and so is she.”

Something very unpleasant happens to her mouth. “Are you suggesting that this might involve me?”

“It involves you to the extent that it brought me here.”

“I brought you here,” she says imperiously. “Not this stupid girl.”

“And if I came, so will others. Who knows who’ll they’ll be?”

The hands drop to the chair’s wheels as though she intends to leave the room. Instead, she moves it forward several inches, squealing her way closer to Rafferty. When she is close enough to make him wish he could move the chair backward, the squealing stops and the silence of the house once again presses against his ears, like water.

“And who do you think they might be?” she asks.

The intensity of the question unnerves him. “Could be anyone. The police, the Australian embassy.”

She nods a tenth of an inch. Her lids drop slightly, hooding the eyes for a merciful moment, and then she turns to the carved stone on the wall. Her gaze travels left to right, like those of someone reading a newspaper. When she has finished, she says, without looking at him, “That’s hardly anyone.” Then she lifts her hands and claps once. The sound is still ringing in Rafferty’s ears when Jeeves steps into the doorway.

“This horrible girl,” she says, handing him the letter. “Bring the file.”

Pak doesn’t bow, but it’s close. “Yes, Madame Wing.” He is gone, and she shifts her eyes to Rafferty. The whites are a nicotine yellow. “The man is probably dead,” she says, with no change in tone. “Everybody dies. It is the only thing we have in common.”

Not many replies spring to mind. “Why did you write the letter?”

“She was making a lot of noise.”

“But you knew she wasn’t good at her job.”

She looks puzzled. “What does that matter to me? At any rate, other people’s households are not as disciplined as this one.”

“Mine certainly isn’t,” Rafferty says. He is wondering who she thought might come knocking on her door, who it was who was not included in his “anyone.”

She does not respond to his remark. She simply looks at him while she waits for Pak to return. The shining eyes do not shift or waver. Rafferty takes it as long as he can and then studies the bas-reliefs on the opposite wall. Life, action, argument, laughter, war, love. All in silent stone, as silent as this house. He can hear himself swallow.

Rafferty is on the verge of saying something, anything, to break the stillness when Pak appears with a file in his hands. He presents it to Madame Wing two-handed, as though it were on a cushion.

“You have a pencil,” she says, opening it. Pak melts away into the hall.

“Tippawan Dangphai,” she reads. “Twenty years old. Nickname . . .” She peers at the page as though the type has begun to square dance.

“Doughnut,” Rafferty supplies, pulling out his pad.

She shakes her head at the name. “From Isaan. The town is called–” She lets loose an avalanche of Thai syllables, which Rafferty does not even try to follow. He is not going to Isaan, no matter what. “This was her first position in Bangkok.” She turns the page. “She still had mud between her toes,” she says.

Rafferty is unsure how to react, but it might have been a joke. “What address did she give you?” Hoping it’s not the Bangkok Bank.

“She was staying with a sister in Banglamphoo.” She reads an address. “Have you got that?” The question is severe, as though she is daring him to say no.

“And you have no idea where she is now?”

“No.” She closes the folder. “Now to my business.” She rolls her chair backward and reaches behind her to close the door. The room seems much smaller. “Something has been stolen from me,” she says. Her face is suddenly white and pinched, her voice strangled. Rafferty is looking at pure, distilled rage. “You will find it.”

“Afraid not,” Rafferty says, getting up. “I’m pretty much booked up.”

“When you find it you will return it to me. You will not look at it.”

“I’m not even going to find it.”

She says: “Ten thousand dollars.”

Rafferty sits. Miaow’s adoption, he thinks.

“I had a safe buried outside. It had something in it that I need. You will find it, and you will find the man who took it.”

“I don’t know,” Rafferty says, but he does. Ten thousand dollars would feed Rose’s hopefuls until they find work. It would pay for Miaow’s schooling for two years.

It would fund Hank Morrison.

“You will bring them both to me, the man and the thing he stole.”

He takes another look at Madame Wing. The eyes settle it.

“The police–”

”I cannot go to the police. The thing that was stolen–” She hesitates for the first time since they began to talk. “It is private. I cannot trust the police with it.”

“Then how do you know you can trust me with it?”

“You are one man,” she says.

“And that means?”

She smiles at him. “You have one neck.”

“Well, that’s that,” Rafferty says. He pushes his chair back.

“Twenty thousand.”

“Madame Wing,” he says, “you just threatened me.”

“You can only threaten yourself,” she says. “If you bring it to me unopened, you will have no problem.”

“And how will you know if I’ve opened it?”

She puts the gnarled hands in her lap. “Your face will tell me.” Then she says, “Twenty-five thousand.” She settles back in the chair, completely relaxed.

“I don’t work for people who threaten me.”

“I did not intend to threaten you.” She lowers her head. “Please forgive an old woman who has lost something very precious to her.”

“Excuse an American expression,” he says, “but you have impressive juju.”

The chin comes up. “What is ‘juju’?”

“Power. Like a kind of magic.”

Madame Wing looks pleased. It is not a change for the better. “I had juju once,” she says. “But that was a long time ago. Now I am old and helpless. Someone has taken something from me. He came here at night and stole it. Do you think this should be allowed? Do you think men should be able to steal things from old women who have nothing left but memories?”

Well, put that way. “Of course not.”

“Thirty thousand dollars,” she says. “That’s as high as I will go. In cash. Half now and half when you bring me the thing that was stolen and the man who took it.”

Fifteen thousand dollars. In advance. “I don’t deliver people,” Rafferty says.

“You will tell us where he is, then.”

“What happens if I can’t find it?” He is thinking in terms of being drawn and quartered.

She looks at him with those nocturnal eyes. “Then you do not receive the second payment. But I am certain you will find it.”

“I have conditions.”

She settles in. They’ve moved to negotiation. “They are?”

“If I find it, whatever it is, I’ll return it to you or to whomever you choose, in a public place at a time I designate. You’ll pay me then and there. I won’t deliver the man to you unless I know you’re not going to harm him. And finally, I’ll give it a week.”

“Two.”

Now it is his turn to wait her out. He forces himself to hold her gaze.

“One, then,” she says. “I have conditions in return. I will require a daily report, on the telephone, since you are not comfortable coming here.” Something about a light year away from amusement flickers in her eyes. “The report will be detailed. You will tell me where you have gone, what you have done, whom you have spoken with. You will tell no one else at all, no one in the world, what you are doing for me. Is this acceptable?”

“I guess,” Rafferty says. “Sure. It’s acceptable.”

“Good.” she claps her hands again, three times, and the door to the room opens. Pak floats in, carrying a fat envelope, which he presents to Rafferty.

“Fifteen thousand dollars,” Madame Wing says. “All hundreds, no counterfeits. You may examine them.”

“Is there a price written on my forehead?” Rafferty asks. “What if I had stopped at twenty?”

She smiles, a new vista of awfulness. Her teeth are long and crooked, the color of mustard. “I would have clapped twice.”

“What am I looking for?”

“An envelope. Not like the one I just gave you — bigger. Heavy brown paper, tied with twine. There is nothing written on it, but three old stamps have been pasted in the upper right corner. You are not to open it.”

“You’ve made that point quite eloquently.”

“The man you are looking for is a Cambodian. He will be between forty and fifty-five. He may be physically damaged in some way. He will be in Bangkok.”

“How do you know all that?”

The eyes come up, hooded. “It is my life. Who would know better?”

“The safe was in that hole out there?”

She nods.

“How did he get in? You have guards–”

“He came on the river, at night. The guard at the dock was caught unawares and struck with a stone. The fool. He is no longer here, of course.”

“I’ll need to talk to him.”

“He can tell you nothing. We talked to him for several hours. He did not see the man.”

“I still want to talk to him.”

She seems to be considering alternatives, but then she nods. “Pak will give you the address when you leave.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

“Two nights.”

“Were you here?”

“If I had been here,” she says venomously, leaning toward him, “he would be dead.”

Well, okay. “Two nights ago. Cambodian. How do you know he’ll stay in Bangkok?”

She folds the gnarled hands, calm again, and looks at the carved stone. “He has to stay here,” she says. “The robbery is only the beginning. He means to destroy me.”

Copyright © 2007 Timothy Hallinan

Author
Timothy Hallinan divides his time between Los Angeles and Southeast Asia, primarily Thailand, where he has lived off and on for more than twenty years. As a principal in one of America’s top television-based public-relations firms, he represented programs sponsored by many Fortune 500 companies and pioneered new methods of making television programming accessible to teachers. He also taught writing for many years.

For more information, please visit www.timothyhallinan.com.