Free For the Dead by Timothy Hallinan

and goes to it, running her hand over the hanging clothes.
    “You are the sweetest man,” she says. When they first met she’d been reluctant to speak aloud, insecure about her voice, but now she almost never uses the pale blue pad she’d written everything on during those first days. She gives him a smile that ties his heart in a knot and takes a deep breath. “It smells so good in here.”
    At the precise moment his words desert him, Arthit’s cell phone rings. He smiles at her and puts it to his ear. His lieutenant, Kosit, says, “You’d better get in here. Last night someone killed Sawat and three other guys.”
    “It was just a matter of time,” Arthit says, feeling Anna’s eyes on his lips.
    “Well, your boss is completely crazy, and two of the three who were killed were cops.”

9
Flat as Buttons
    T HE ROOMS THROUGH which Arthit hauls himself, his back still in spasm and arguing against every step he takes, are oddly quiet. Here and there, cops gather in tight circles. Faces are stiff and voices are low. One of Arthit’s friends meets his eyes, points up toward the floor claimed by the brass, fills his cheeks with air and blows it out, and shakes his head.
    Meaning,
rampage
.
    Well, fuck him, Arthit thinks. By “him,” Arthit means his immediate superior, Thanom, a man who has painstakingly squandered every bit of trust any of his subordinates were ever misguided enough to offer him. He’s a fifth-rate cop but an Olympic medalist at riding the ever-shifting updrafts and occasional tailwinds of political favor. Kosit, Arthit’s closest friend on the force, once said, “He’s never missed an ass he tried to kiss.” Thanom has survived the rise and fall of prime ministers and police chiefs. He’s weathered the intricate, Machiavellian backstage minuets of the
princelings
—the third and fourth sons of old families, assigned to stratospheric ranks in the police because their older brothers have already claimed positions in government and the military. Once embedded, the princelings seize territory, inhale departments, and double-cross each other in the perpetual struggle to dip into the wide, endless river of graft.
    Thanom
should
be upset about this, Arthit thinks. He should be scared bloodless.
    Kosit materializes out of a doorway. He says, “You look a hundred.”
    Arthit says, “Thank you for reminding me.”
    Kosit slows to Arthit’s pace. They walk side by side, eyes straight ahead, trying not to look like they’re having a conversation.
    “He wants to keep it in this department,” Kosit says, barely moving his lips. He waves at someone as they pass a door.
    “Sure, he does. He’s got to be soaking wet and stinking by now. This will splash all over him.”
    “The Dancer? He’ll shimmy out of the way. He did before, didn’t he?”
    “Just barely,” Arthit says. “Sawat reported to him. It was a miracle he didn’t go down when the story broke.”
    “You mean, just because one of his very own, hand-chosen, hand-promoted officers was running a murder-for-hire ring, using other cops to kill people? Little thing like that’s not going to bring down the Dancer. Barely scratched his finish.”
    They make a right and go up a flight of stairs, Arthit feeling the cramps in his stomach having a tug-of-war with the ones in his back. “Who were the cops who got killed?”
    “Didn’t recognize the names of the active cops, but the other guy got kicked out same time Sawat did. Worked under Thanom, too. A real low-forehead, first name was Jian.”
    “Don’t remember.”
    “A head-cracker.”
    “Good company for Sawat.” They reach the top of the stairs. “You know,” Arthit says, “if you think back to high school, a lot of the people who became cops were tough guys. You looked at them then and you thought, fifty-fifty which side they’d wind up on. Could have been kicking heads in for some godfather or carrying a gun and a stick and kicking heads for mom and country.”
    “That was