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Perhaps you had made an appointment to meet him.”
    Rafferty turns the pictures around and breathes twice to calm himself. “Have you looked at these? See all the spilled paint? See the open cans? See the store I was coming out of? It’s a paint store.”
    Major Shen taps a slender, unimpeachably manicured finger against the surface of one of the photos. “He’s talking to you.” He has cloves on his breath and, beneath that, the reek of cigarettes.
    “A couple of words.”
    “The film says otherwise. The film says he spoke to you for ten seconds or so.”
    “The film?”
    “The TV crew. You gave them their best footage of the day.”
    “Did I make the seven-o’clock? Am I famous?”
    “I’m afraid not.” He shifts his weight, and the chair wobbles. “It’s remarkable how uncomfortable this chair is, even with my shoes under it. We should really treat our guests better.”
    “Why wasn’t it on television?”
    The smile peeks out and goes away again. “As I said, it shows he spoke to you for ten seconds or thereabouts.”
    “Mostly not. Mostly he was working up to talking. He had blood in his throat, and he made a bunch of noises before he could actually say anything.” Major Shen’s eyes have drifted with apparent disinterest until he’s looking over Rafferty’s shoulder. “You say you saw the film. You must have seen all the blood he coughed up.”
    Major Shen’s eyes come back. “But
then
he spoke.”
    “Yes.” The alcohol chimes in again, bringing anger with it. “And even though I resent the hell out of being dragged down here like this and I
really
resent your bringing my wife and daughter into the conversation, I’ll tell you what he said. He said a name—a woman’s name, I think—and then the name the name of a city.”
    “A city?” Shen smooths an eyebrow with the tip of his index finger. “What city?”
    What city had it been? Rafferty draws a blank, and then the name appears before him, and he grabs at it. “Helena.”
    Major Shen closes his eyes and furrows his brow for a moment, as though he thinks he might have seen Helena at some point and is trying to picture it. When he opens them, he’s looking over Rafferty’s shoulder again. “In Montana?”
    “If that’s where Helena is. Montana, Wyoming—sure, Montana. I guess.”
    The pouchy eyes, which Rafferty’s altered perspective suddenly recognizes as the aftermath of alcohol, return to Rafferty’s face. “You remember ‘the name of a town in Montana’ but not the name.”
    “I’ve been to Montana. I went there once, when I was a kid. The woman’s name was just a name, and I was a little rattled.”
    “Rattled.”
    “Yeah, you know. American slang? Rattled? Having a guy die on me and all that. People running. Shots being fired. Shots you denied, by the way. Not the ideal spot for concentration.”
    “You’re not used to having people die on you.”
    “Not especially.”
    Major Shen sits back and crosses his legs, a man with all the time in the world. “And yet people die
around
you with some regularity.”
    The room suddenly feels not so much cool as frigid. Rafferty tries to keep his face blank as he ransacks his mind for anything that could connect him directly to any of the people who actually
have
died around him since he came to Bangkok. “You must know something about my life I don’t.”
    Shen lowers his head and looks at Rafferty from under his eyebrows. “A Chinese gangster. An American defense contractor who apparently had some sort of relationship with your wife.” He checks his perfect nails female–style, extending his arm, fingers straight, and looking at the back of his hand. “To name just two.” He lifts his head and turns the smile on again, the picture of someone whose memory has just kicked in. “Oh, and that billionaire Pan, so that’s three. That we know of. Not exactly a bookish life, is it?”
    Rafferty doesn’t reply. But there’s only one person in Bangkok who might