Read Online The Fear Artist by Timothy Hallinan - Free Book Online

pretty much anyone he wanted from any department he wanted. And he chose knuckle-draggers, the kind of guys you’d take into the street if you thought you might have to fire into a crowd.”
    Anna is writing again, but this time she holds the pad up for everyone to see. It says, in English,
Who was the other one?
    Rafferty says, “You mean, with—”
    “With Elson,” Arthit says. Anna nods and pulls from the pad the page she’d begun to write on. She folds it neatly in precise halves and puts it on the coffee table.
    “Never saw him before,” Rafferty says. “Short, fat, redheaded, red-faced. High blood pressure and a short fuse, great combination. Maybe sixty-five, maybe seventy. Had what would have beena handlebar mustache if it had been on his upper lip instead of coming out of his nose. Dressed like a budget tourist.”
    Arthit shakes his head. “No idea.”
    Anna is writing again, and they all wait. Even Pim is watching her with half-concealed curiosity. When Anna holds the pad up, it says,
They wanted to know what the man in the street said to you?
    “Yes. Could you see what it was?”
    She shakes her head.
No plosives
, she writes.
No fricatives. No rounded vowels. He was in profile
.
    “A plosive is like a
b
or a
p
,” Arthit says, with the air of someone parading new knowledge. “A fricative is an
f
or a
v
. They’re easy to see.”
    “And a rounded vowel,” Rafferty says, “is a rounded vowel.” He thinks for a moment. “No
m
’s either. How about that?”
    Impossible to read in profile
, Anna writes.
    “Major Shen was … upset with her,” Arthit says. “He swore at her, accused her of lying.” Rafferty is surprised at the anger behind those words, and Pim listens with her mouth open. Anna puts a hand on Arthit’s wrist as though to stop him, but he’s too steamed to slow down. “Even though he knows her, she said he treated her like a … like trash off the street.”
    Anna is writing. She holds up the pad, and it reads
Very bad man
.
    “What do you mean, he knows you?”
    “When they were kids,” Arthit says. “They’re both from respectable families without much money, people who all pretty much know each other. Old families, but not powerful.” Anna nods. “It’s a relatively small circle, all living in Bangkok, all going to the same schools. She knew him when they were ten or eleven. Hell, Noi probably knew him.”
    Anna has been writing, and they wait until she finishes. She holds up the pad.
Bad even then. He hurt weak kids. He stole things
.
    “He’s lived in America,” Rafferty says, and waits as she writes.
    Military school
, Anna’s upraised pad says.
    “He lived there long enough to get dual citizenship,” Arthit says. “That’s part of his legend, the only Thai cop with dual citizenship.” He shakes imaginary water from his fingers as though tosay,
Big deal
. “People say he got recruited by the American spooks, and then a couple of years ago he was back here again, sent by the U.S. to help us deal with the problems in the south, although we all know what that really means. It means they want a listening post and an errand boy in the department.”
    “He did go all glimmery about my potential Muslim connections.”
    “Sure he did,” Arthit says. “For Shen’s department ‘Muslims’ is the answer to every question. Probably looks for an imam under his bed every night.”
    “Well,” Rafferty says, “
Somebody
killed about five thousand people down south.”
    “I’m not saying the problem isn’t real. What I’m saying is that we’re using bad people to fight bad people, and you do
not
want to be in the middle of that.”
    “Yeah, well, that’s where I think I am.”
    Anna is pointing at her pad again. It says,
What did you tell them?
    He hesitates for a moment and sees that she registers the hesitation. “I told them he said ‘Helena.’ ” He remouths it when he sees Anna squinting at him. “As in the city in Montana. And I said