Free The Hot Countries by Timothy Hallinan Page B

stall, scrubbing at the watch with a graying towel, holding it up to see whether the second hand is still jerking forward in the one-second increments that mark the watch as a fake. He dries it a final time, puts it to his ear, and slips it back on his wet wrist, then sees what he’s done and yanks it off again to pat the skin dry, and a few minutes later he’s back on the bed, drying his shoulders and toweling away the drops of water that hit the top of his head. He checks the watch again, sees the second hand lurching from silver numeral to silver numeral, and asks himself, Weren’t these luminous? Asks himself, Wasn’t “Rolex” written in gold? What watch is this? How many of these has he bought since he lost the Rolex?
    He leans back against the pillows, sees in his mind’s eye the face, the hair, the timeworn, destroyed Wallace he’d seen in the mirror. Jah , he thinks. She’d be seventy by now. A kind of deep-sea pressure settles on him, squeezing out a long sigh. He hears Jah’s laugh, as though she were in the living room.
    The light in the living room is on. Wallace thinks, Leon. Leon was here, wasn’t he? And then he pulls the thin blanket over himself and closes his eyes, and he’s asleep.

7
    A Rat on a Sharp Stick
    â€œHe’s American,” Rafferty says. “No regional accent, could be from anywhere.”
    â€œWe get about three-quarters of a million Americans every year,” Arthit says, rubbing his eyes. “And we’ve got another twenty, thirty thousand living here.” He’s wearing an industrial-gray T-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts, baring short, hairy legs. It’s Saturday, and he’d obviously planned to sleep in, although Anna has already left for the homeless-children’s shelter. On Saturday she teaches her special class of nonhearing children. On the weekdays they’re mixed in with those who can hear. Coffee is dripping in the kitchen, but Rafferty, who was up most of the night—stewing, as his mother would have said, in his own juices—has already downed a pot and a half and is feeling the persuasive, strumming adrenaline of anxiety.
    Rafferty says, “Thank you for the statistics, but he’s not like m ost of the tourists and expats. He stands out. He’s after the money, Arthit, Murphy’s money. He tracked me down in that bar somehow and set the whole thing up. He was in the bar when I arrived last night, talking, of course. About ten minutes after I came in, he said he forgot something. So he goes back outside for a minute or two, just long enough to make a phone call or give an instruction. When he comes back, he’s not carrying anything I can see, so maybe he didn’t forget anything after all. Half an hour later, the kid barges in and gives me this.” He taps the piece of paper on the table, now stiff and dry. “He was watching me as I read it. He wanted to see my reaction.”
    â€œAnd how did you react?”
    â€œI don’t know. I have no idea. It was like I’d gotten caught between a pair of cymbals, and all I could do was wait for the ringing in my ears to stop.”
    â€œI’m not going to minimize any of this,” Arthit says. “But who could he be?” They’re in the living room, wan morning light filtering through the windows, the sky outside flashing a few optimistic, misleading patches of blue like fake watches gleaming inside a con man’s coat. The house is silent and immaculate but wrong to Rafferty’s eyes—Anna’s pictures are on the walls, and her small ornaments and prizes litter the tables, spaces that had been decorated with the things that Noi, Arthit’s wife, dead now for a year and a half, had kept there. Still, it’s immeasurably better than it had been in the months following Noi’s death, when Arthit had closed the door on the world so he could drink uninterrupted, his loneliness a