Killing Rain Part 18

"His. Dox's."

G.o.dd.a.m.nit, I thought, I told him to keep that f.u.c.king thing off. Then: Not now. Deal with that later.

Dox said, "Hey, a.s.shole, how do you know my name?"

I shot him a murderous shut the f.u.c.k up this is my show glance, then looked back at Perry Mason. "How did you get the number?"

"I don't know. It was just given to me."

Bulls.h.i.t it was just given to you. "If I have to ask you again, you lose this eye."

There was a pause, then he said, "I don't know for sure. I was told it came from some Russian outfit."

I knew Dox had done some work with the Russians not so long ago. I glanced at him, my eyebrows raised. He gave me a yeah, I guess that's possible shrug in return.

All right. I had deliberately started with a question about tools and tactics, something this guy could give up without feeling he was compromising his integrity. This would warm him up, help him rationalize his responses to the tougher inquiries that would follow. We'd started with how, and that had gone well. What I really wanted to talk about was who. But I sensed he still wasn't ready for that, not even at the cost of his eyes. As a bridge between what we had accomplished and what still remained to be done, I decided to use why.

"Why are you coming after us?" I asked.

He paused, then said, "You tried to take out an a.s.set in Manila."

"What a.s.set?" His neck was stretched taut with his efforts to stay ahead of the pressure of the knife. "Lavi," he said. "Manheim Lavi."

"Why? Retaliation?"

I already knew the answer to that one: information, not retaliation. If it had been simple retaliation they were after, they would have just tried to kill Dox and me. They wouldn't have bothered hiring a bunch of locals to grab us and stuff us into the back of a van. But I wanted to keep him talking just a little more before we got down to bra.s.s tacks.

"Information," he said. "We needed to know who was behind the hit so we could straighten things out."

"What do you mean, 'straighten things out'?"

"We have to protect our people. If there's a threat, we deal with the threat."

We were running out of time. The patrons in front of the club might discover some misplaced courage and decide to interfere. And certainly the police would be here soon.

Okay, here we go. "Who is 'we'?" I asked.

He shook his head. I pushed the knife up a fraction and he cried out.

"Last time, and then you lose this eye. Who is we?"

He started to hyperventilate. He'd been standing on the very tips of his toes and his legs were trembling. But he wasn't answering my question.

I didn't want to do it-not out of any misplaced squeamishness, but because once you start hurting the subject, you start to lose your leverage. Fear is the ultimate motivator, but what you're afraid of is by definition the thing that hasn't happened yet. Once the thing has happened, you're not afraid of it anymore. Once I'd taken out an eye, the loss of that eye would no longer be a threat. It would be one less thing the fear of which would motivate him.

But if you threaten and then fail to act, your subsequent threats lack credibility. It's not pretty, but that's the way a high-pressure interrogation works.

It occurred to me that there was one more problem. Whoever was behind this guy, if he were found sans an eye or two, they would know he had died after being interrogated. They could then be expected to change their plans, their security, to protect whatever their man might have compromised under duress. And, although in fact he had compromised very little, we had his hotel room key now. That presented some interesting possibilities I would have preferred not to foreclose.

d.a.m.n, it was a dilemma. But before I had a chance to resolve it, Perry Mason started to scream. Not so much in pain, or even to call for aid, but in outrage and desperation.

Dox slammed his hand over the man's mouth, but the screaming decided it for me. We were exposed here, and too much time had gone by since the start of the incident. It was past time for us to bug out.

I looked at Dox. He nodded and I thought he understood. I took a half step back and kneed the guy in the groin. The screaming was displaced by a grunt and his body tried to double forward, but Dox was holding him too tightly. I changed my grip on the knife so that I was holding it ice pick style, blade in, and plunged it into his upper left pectoral, just below the clavicle. I ripped down and across, lacerating the subclavian artery.

I pulled Dox aside. The man spilled to his knees. He let out a long, agonized groan and pitched forward, but managed to get his arms out and caught himself before his head hit the pavement. There wasn't much blood-the artery was transected, and the bleeding would be mostly into his chest and lungs-but there was no question that he would be unconscious in seconds, and dead shortly after that. I stepped in and slashed him twice across the forearms and he collapsed onto his face. He lay there, moaning and writhing.

I saw that I'd gotten blood on my hands-from his mouth or his chest, I didn't know. I pulled a handkerchief from my back pocket and cleaned up the best I could. I handed the handkerchief to Dox and gestured for him to do the same. His eyes were wide and he seemed a little stunned, but he used the handkerchief. We'd be more thorough later.

One more thing. I glanced inside the open sliding door and saw what I was looking for: cell phone tracking equipment, strapped with duct tape to one of the back seats. Other than the equipment, the interior was clean. I used the handkerchief to open the van's pa.s.senger door, then to pop the glove compartment, hoping to find registration or some other clue to Perry Mason's ident.i.ty. There was a first aid kit inside. I opened it, and saw vials of atropine and naloxone, and syringes. Interesting. But no registration, nothing to identify the people who had rented the van.

"Come on," I said to Dox, who had been uncharacteristically quiet for the last minute or so. "We need to get out of here."

We walked briskly across the street to the Lumpini Park side, where it was comfortingly dark. I glanced back at the sidewalk in front of the bars as we moved. The patrons had all gone inside. The two men on the sidewalk weren't moving. We cut over to a sub-soi paralleling Ratchadamri, then started walking south and looking for a cab. Under the reflected glow of a collapsing storefront sign, I paused and looked at Dox, who still hadn't said a word in a record-breakingly long time. "Hey," I said quietly. "Look at me. Am I okay? Do I have any blood on me? Anything?"

He looked me up and down, then shook his head. "No. You're okay."

I gave him a once-over, as well, and nodded. "You are, too."

He didn't say anything in response. I never thought I'd be concerned that Dox was being too quiet, but it wasn't like him.

"You all right?" I asked.

He closed his eyes, took two deep breaths, leaned forward, and vomited.

I looked around us. There weren't any pedestrians on this section of road. Even if there had been a few, I doubted they'd be overly interested. It wouldn't be the first time anyone had seen a farang who'd had a bit too much to drink.

When he was done, he wiped his mouth and straightened. "d.a.m.n, that's embarra.s.sing," he said.

We started moving again. "Don't worry about it," I told him.

"That's never happened to me, man, never."

"It can happen to anyone."

"Did it ever happen to you?"

I paused, then admitted, "No. But I don't know that's something to be proud of."

"I just didn't know you were going to do that, stab him like that. If I'd known, I could have gotten ready."

"Sorry. Couldn't warn you without warning him."

"Why'd you slash his arms, man? I saw where you cut him, he was already dead for sure."

"I wanted it to look like he went down fighting, not being interrogated. If his people think he was interrogated, they'll a.s.sume he gave up information. I want to keep them in the dark."

"So if he was fighting . . ."

"Then he would have defensive wounds on his forearms."

"Oh. All right. Glad you weren't just being s.a.d.i.s.tic. Is that why you didn't take out his eye?"

"That's why."

"Would you have?"

I paused, then said, "Yeah."

"d.a.m.n. I was afraid you were going to."

I could tell Dox didn't have much experience with hostile interrogations. I thought he ought to count himself lucky for that.

A cab came by and we flagged it down. I told the driver to take us to Chong Nonsi sky train station.

As we drove away and it began to seem as though we'd made it, the enormity of what had just happened started to settle in. Yeah, Dox had helped me out, but his stupidity had caused the problem in the first place. I had told him about the d.a.m.n phone. Told him specifically. Why couldn't he listen? What was so hard about turning off a cell phone? I tried not to say anything, thinking it pointless at the moment, but then it started coming out anyway.

"What did I tell you about that f.u.c.king phone?" I whispered. "What did I tell you?"

He looked at me, his expression darkening. "Look, man, I am absolutely not in the mood."

"There's equipment that can triangulate on a cell phone. They had it in that van. It's accurate to about twenty-five feet. Tiara, the lady-boy who liked you for yourself? Her job was probably to go to the adjacent bars to help narrow it down."

"How was I supposed to know that? You didn't know either, not until after."

"Is it on now? Is it still on?"

He blanched and squirmed forward in his seat to reach into his pocket. He pulled out his phone, flipped it open, and pressed a b.u.t.ton. It issued its cheery farewell melody and powered off.

"Why?" I asked. "Why would you leave that thing on?"

"Look, man, I've got clients, okay? There are people who need to reach me."

"Not when we're operational!" I paused, then said, "Clients, my a.s.s. It was a girl, wasn't it? Or girls."

His nostrils flared. "What if it was?"

"You just opened a tunnel-sized hole in our security, while we're operational, when we know we've got people looking for us, to get laid!"

"You know, not everyone enjoys your well-developed sense of solitude, partner. I like a little companionship from time to time, yeah."

"They can use voice mail!"

"All right, I get the point! I made a mistake, I admit it, okay? What more do you want from me?"

I started to say something, then got a grip on myself. He was right, there was no point in playing I-told-you-so. And then I felt bad. He had just saved my a.s.s back there with that chair.

I closed my eyes and exhaled. "I'm sorry. s.h.i.t like what just happened makes me cranky, okay? Usually there's no one around for me to take it out on."

There was a pause. Then he said, "I'm sorry, too. It was a dumb mistake. You were right."

"What happened, anyway? Where did you go? I thought something had happened to you."

He grinned, obviously coming back to himself. "Is that your way of telling me you care? 'Cause it gives me a warm feeling, it really does."

I looked at him. "I think I liked it better when you were puking."

He chuckled. "I just walked across the street to Lumpini to take a leak. I heard you shout, but it still took me a minute to cut off the stream and get Nessie put away."

Before I could think better of it, I asked, " 'Nessie'?"

"You know, the Loch Ness Monster. I had a girlfriend once who named my . . ."

"I get it, I get it."

"Anyway, I came running as fast as I could. Why'd you follow me out, anyway?"

I told him about the feeling I'd gotten about "Tiara" being a set-up.

"d.a.m.n, son," he said, "you are good. I have to admit, that whole thing went right by me. I promise I'll never call you paranoid again."

The cab pulled up in front of Chong Nonsi station. We got out and watched it pull away. "You see a sewer?" I asked, looking around. "We need to dump the knives. And the handkerchief."

"Dump them?"

"Yeah. We don't want to be carrying anything that would connect us with a recent multiple homicide, do we?"

"Partner, I'll have you know that the knives in question are a Benchmade AFCK and a Fred Perrin La Griffe. These are high-quality instruments of destruction and not so easy to come by. It would be wasteful in the extreme to 'dump' them."

I looked at him. "It would be 'wasteful in the extreme' to have the prosecution use them as evidence of why we should spend the rest of our lives in a Thai prison."

"All right, I understand where you're coming from. Tell you what, how about if I sterilize them? Alcohol, bleach, whatever. You tell me how and I'll do it. Plus you can have either one you want."

I paused for a moment. If we cleaned them, I supposed, the risk would be manageable. It would have been safer, more thorough, to get rid of them entirely, but maybe this was one of the many battles with Dox that wasn't worth fighting.

I said, "I'll take the La Griffe."

He looked crestfallen. "s.h.i.t, man, I want the La Griffe. It's so cool."

I rolled my eyes. "All right, whatever. I'll take the AFCK."

He brightened. "Thanks, partner. You're a good man."

"Since you're feeling so magnanimous," I said, "let's keep moving for a while. I want to do a few more things to break the connection between us and what just happened in front of the club."

He shook his head. "I don't have a problem with that."

See? You get a little by giving a little, I thought.