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bag. Her eyes fall on the fold of the sweatshirt and then come up to Rafferty’s. There is a crease between her eyebrows. “Blue?” she says. She shakes the bag as though the child is in it. “He wear blue?”
    “Blue as the sky, but dirtier. Head to…um—What in the world is wrong?”
    Tik has stepped back, shaking her head vigorously. “Thin, na? Blue clothes. Here, on the front—” She sketches a loosely shaped zigzag on her chest.
    “That’s him,” Rafferty says.
    “No.” She holds out the bag to him as though he has something communicable, not meeting his eyes.
    “What do you mean, no?”
    “No. Just no.” Her arm remains stretched out, her hand clutching the bag, forgotten.
    “Can you be a little more specific?”
    “This boy. No good. Him…him…” She extends her right hand, index finger pointing like the barrel of a pistol, and lets her thumb drop. “Bang, bang,” she says. Then she says, “Him kill.”

5
Then We’ll Start to Ask Him Questions
    T he guard’s head breaks the surface, spouting pints of muddy water. His jaws have been clamped open with a stainless-steel device designed for root canals. When it was forced into the guard’s mouth, it dislocated his jaw, which sags to the side like something in a funhouse mirror.
    The largest of the three shirtless men ringing the hole in the lawn puts a hand the size of a badminton racket on top of the guard’s head and pushes him back under.
    One of the other men laughs.
    “I’m glad you find this amusing,” says the lady of the house, and the laughter stops as suddenly as though someone had shut a door on it.
    The guard surfaces again, and the big man slams him on top of the head with the broad side of a brick. Red brick dust settles on the surface of the water. His arms flailing, the guard tries to get a grip on the grass fringing the hole, but the man who laughed puts the edge of his boot heel on the closest hand and grinds down. Whatever it isthe guard is trying to say, the dental appliance turns it into one long, agonized vowel.
    The biggest man picks up the garden hose that they have used to fill the hole and wields it like a whip, the metal at its tip opening cuts in the guard’s scalp and face. Water spouts out of the hose in lazy arcs, sparkling in the late-afternoon sun. The guard goes underwater, this time on his own, trying to dodge the hose, and the man lashes at the surface of the water, splashing the thick liquid everywhere.
    The lady of the house moves her chair back so she will not get mud on her shoes. She says, “Give him another drink.”
    When the guard surfaces again, one of the men grabs his ears, tilting his face up, and the big man thrusts the end of the hose into the guard’s mouth and six or eight inches straight down his throat. Then he pinches the guard’s nostrils closed. The guard begins to spasm, thrashing, striking out with his arms, spouting water like a fountain. After ten or fifteen seconds, the big man pulls the hose out, and a spurt of water gives way to a ragged howl loud enough and high enough to lift the birds from the trees and send them skimming over the placid, coffee-colored surface of the river.
    “Two more times,” says the lady of the house, settling herself in her chair to watch the hose snake once again into the wide mouth. “Or maybe three.”
    The scream is cut off as abruptly as it started. “Then we’ll start to ask him questions,” she says.

6
A Cool Heart
    S ilhouetted against the setting sun, Miaow squats on the little balcony overlooking the Chinese cemetery eight floors below, staring a hole in the fire as she feeds the blue flames their blue fuel. The sleeve of Superman’s filthy sweatshirt hangs over the side of Rafferty’s rusty hibachi. A fine edge of flame licks its way down. With a long-handled barbecue fork, Miaow spears the sleeve, lifts it, and drops it into the center of the flames, raising a small puff of smoke and ash. The sliding glass door between the