Rafferty prints out all five stories. Each of the pieces ultimately dithers off into the vague language the Thai police use to describe their lack of progress in an investigation that’s aimed directly at somewhere they’re not going to be allowed to go. And there’s no doubt there are heavyweights behind at least some of the fires. The slums were burned to make way for buildings, the houses probably burned as warnings, and the toy factory burned through inhuman stupidity, coupled with greed for yet more profit.

The odds were good that Pan had been involved in one of them. And Rafferty would guess it was one of the ones that involved death, given the magnitude of the favors he had been granted.

Rafferty had misquoted Balzac: Behind every great fortune is a great crime. Pan’s fortune might have begun in fire.

THE TIME CRAWLS past.

Arthit refuses to go home early. He doesn’t want to explain to Noi that he has effectively been suspended from the force. She’ll take the blame, knowing that his work is the only thing he has now. She doesn’t need the guilt.

So he does something he’s never been good at: He wastes time. He’s been busy his entire adult life. He doesn’t take vacations-something he regrets now; he should have taken Noi to Hawaii, to Los Angeles, to Tahiti-somewhere that would have made her happy. He should have done a million things, but he didn’t. He was who he was, and she had loved him-she still loves him-anyway.

He spends half an hour trying out pens in a stationery store, writing the names of everyone he knows, including Noi’s doctors. He browses shelves of books he wouldn’t read if they materialized one morning under his pillow. He walks through unfamiliar neighborhoods, seeing some of Bangkok’s remaining small villages, seeing how the people stiffen and grow quiet at the sight of his uniform. Tasting the bitterness in the back of his throat that it should be so.

He thumbs through stacks of bootleg DVDs, eyed nervously by sidewalk vendors who yanked the albums of pornography out of sight at his approach. To his immense surprise, he finds a film by Buster Keaton, Sherlock Jr., that he’s never seen. There it is, sandwiched in between more usual titles like Terminator 48 and Revolving Door of the Dead. Noi loves Keaton and his modern disciple, Jackie Chan. When he tries to pay for the movie, the vendor waves his money off, but Arthit takes a thousand-baht note, puts it on the table, and slams a DVD case on top of it, harder than he had intended to. With the Keaton in a plastic bag, he trudges off, ashamed to be dressed as a policeman.

He thinks about calling Rafferty, but what would he say? He doesn’t know how to ask for help, and even if he did, he can’t imagine what help Rafferty could offer. Rafferty has more than enough to deal with now. Struck by the thought, he stops and dials Kosit.

“How’s Poke doing?” he asks.

“You mean other than being outmatched and outweighed and not having any idea what to do about it?”

Arthit says, “Right.”

“This is stupid,” Kosit says. “You’re worried about Poke, and Poke’s worried about you. Why don’t you talk to each other?”

“Because I can’t help him.”

“And vice versa. So let me make a suggestion.”

“Go ahead.”

“Get drunk together. Get drunk and sloppy and say a bunch of stuff you’ll regret tomorrow. You’ll both feel better.”

“Go catch a crook,” Arthit says, and hangs up.

But the talk has lifted his spirits slightly. He dials Rafferty’s cell and gets no answer. He checks his watch-4:45. Close enough, and he’s got the Buster Keaton to distract her from the fact that he’s half an hour early.

When he goes into the house, he automatically enters it his new way. The house is essentially a rectangle. The front door opens directly into the living room, which stretches the full width of the house. To the right is the hallway that leads to the two bedrooms and the bathrooms that adjoin them. The hallway ends in the kitchen. To the left is the dining room, which opens into a small breakfast nook that in turn opens into the kitchen. For the past few months, since Noi’s pain took its quantum leap, he’s gone to the left, through the dining room, so he won’t wake her if she’s asleep.

He kicks off his shoes just inside the front door and pads through the silent living room, smelling the lemon scent of the spray wax Noi uses anywhere there’s a square foot of exposed wood. Without slowing down, he drops the Keaton DVD, still in its plastic bag, next to the cascade of unopened mail on the dining-room table, and goes through the nook and into the kitchen. As he comes into the warm, yellow room, as he unbuckles his gun belt and puts it on the table, his stockinged foot hits something slippery, and he looks down at the floor to see a spill of flour.

His heart literally stops.

Then it kicks itself back into life with tremendous force, and he stands there with it thumping in his ears, staring down at a sifting of flour across the tile, as clean and innocent as a dusting of snow.

Feeling like a man walking against a stiff wind, Arthit forces himself across the kitchen and into the hallway, where he stops, two steps in, and looks at the envelope taped to the closed bedroom door.

The tail is wearing a yellow shirt.

He’s been back there for blocks now. Rafferty has glimpsed him three times as he did experimental zigzags between boulevards and sois. He thinks it might be time to get a look at his shadow’s face, for future reference.

The office building is unremarkable, neither new nor old, certainly not architecturally distinctive, and there’s not a soul in it Rafferty knows. He enters the lobby anyway, walking with the brisk purpose of someone who actually has a destination. Without looking around, he pushes the call button for the elevator and waits. When it comes, he turns to face front as he punches the button for the sixth floor. He doesn’t see the yellow shirt as the doors close.

He gets off on the sixth floor, trots down a couple of flights on the fire stairs, and hits the button for the elevator again. He rides it down to the underground parking garage, which opens not onto Silom but onto a small cross street. Up the slope of the exit ramp and then a quick right, away from Silom. A short jog brings him to an alley, which he takes to the next little soi, one that will lead him back down to Silom. He crosses it and takes it to Silom, then crosses that and waits on the sidewalk, watching the building he just went into.

Looking for someone else who’s watching it.

And almost misses him, because he’s looking for yellow, and what he finally sees is navy blue, a dark T-shirt that says BAJA CALIFORNIA on it. The man in blue is short but broad-shouldered, with medium-length hair that’s been parted in the middle and then gooped with mousse to make it fall in spiky curls over his forehead. A small soul patch clings to his lower lip with all the uncertainty of a misplaced comma.

No yellow shirt. Is he being double-teamed?

Rafferty watches for a few more minutes, just to make certain that Yellow Shirt isn’t around, then turns and follows the flow on the sidewalk until he gets to a recessed doorway, leading into a shop that sells fantasy underwear. Rose laughed out loud at the display window once, although Rafferty still sneaks a look at it now and then.

He punches a number into his cell, waits a moment, and then says, “Floyd. It’s Poke. I need a favor.”

“Why am I not surprised?” says Floyd Preece.

“It’s not a conventional favor, Floyd. There’s money in it.” He looks down the street and doesn’t see either the blue shirt or the yellow one. Blue Shirt worries him a little, because he’d gone unnoticed the whole time Rafferty was isolating Mr. Yellow. The last thing he needs right now is to be followed by someone with real skills.