The new tape is a little less than two hours long, the product of their trip down to the fourth floor on the previous morning. He has that much time until the apartment goes silent. After that they’ll begin to wonder. When the curiosity gets too strong, they’ll come through the door.

And then they’ll probably be looking to kill people.

THE GUY BEHIND him isn’t trying to be inconspicuous. He stays two or at most three cars back all the way, a cell phone pressed to one ear. When Rafferty’s taxi stops at the gates to Pan’s earthly paradise, the follower cruises past slowly, then pulls in to the curb halfway down the block.

When the guard opens the gate, Dr. Ravi is already standing there. He lifts his left hand to study his watch, says, “Seven minutes late,” and turns to climb into the swan. “As I told you, time is very tight today.” The vehicle is moving while Rafferty still has one foot on the ground.

“Are my guests here?”

Dr. Ravi purses his lips around something small and sour and says, “They are.”

Rafferty says, “You were never poor.”

If the comment surprises Dr. Ravi, he doesn’t show it. “No. We weren’t rich, but we weren’t poor.”

“You managed to pay for Oxford.”

“Cambridge,” he says, biting the syllables. “I was on a partial scholarship.”

They are cresting the hill that blocks the view of the garden. “You don’t like street kids.”

Dr. Ravi’s shoulders rise and fall. “I don’t mind them in the street. In the house is a different matter.”

“Is that a sentiment your employer shares?”

“I have no idea. He was more like them when he was young than I was.”

“People change,” Rafferty says as the apple tree gleams its way into sight.

A diplomatic head waggle of disagreement. “In some ways. At the core, though, I think they stay the same.”

“Really? You don’t think power corrupts?”

Dr. Ravi makes a tiny adjustment to the steering column with no discernible effect. “It corrupts the corruptible.”

“Ah.” Rafferty sits back and watches the garden slide past. “You knew what Snakeskin meant.”

“Of course. The first thing I did when I came to work here was to go through the documents that spell out Khun Pan’s past.”

“Why would you do that?”

Dr. Ravi turns to face him for a moment, a glance that’s meant to put Rafferty in his place, and then looks back at the road. “I’m his media adviser, remember? I need to know what’s back there, what’s on record, in case something gets dredged up. It probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that there are people in the media who don’t like him.”

“So you’re an expert on his past.”

Dr. Ravi worries the idea for a few seconds and says, “To some extent.”

“Then how’d he get burned?”

They glide past the empty little village, as deserted now as Da’s is. The pigs watch them go with lazy attention, as though wondering whether the swan is edible. “That”-Dr. Ravi accelerates slightly, as though the talk has gone on too long-“you’ll have to ask him about that.”

THE FIRST THING he hears when he opens the front door is laughter, coming from the back of the house, the direction of Pan’s office. Then he hears voices, Pan’s surprisingly wispy one and Da’s. Whatever Pan says, Da starts laughing again.

She turns to smile a greeting at Rafferty as he pushes the door open. Pan is standing in the middle of the room with Peep in his arms. The baby’s dirty blue blanket looks incongruous against the yellow silk covering Pan’s chest, beneath the unsettling pink of his mouth. Boo lounges behind Pan’s desk with his hands folded over his nonexistent belly, apparently completely at ease, and Da occupies the chair Rafferty had claimed four days earlier, the afternoon before the gala fund-raiser.

“What a treat,” Pan says to Rafferty, although his smile is measured. “You have very interesting friends.”

“She’s from Isaan,” Rafferty says.

“Yes,” Pan says, “we’ve had a few minutes to get that on the table. And he’s a flower of the pavement, isn’t he?”

“Or a weed,” Boo says. He grins, but his eyes are watchful.

“Have they told you why I brought them here?”

“We just got here,” Da says. “And we don’t really know.”

“Well, it’s probably rude to bring up business so quickly, but Dr. Ravi says you’re pressed for time.”

Pan gives Peep a little bounce. “Dr. Ravi is an old woman. When you’re as rich as I am, time is elastic.”

“It’s elastic when you’re poor, too,” Boo says.

“That’s true, isn’t it?” Pan says. “I hadn’t thought of it, although I should have. I was poor long enough. But for everybody else, everybody who has something but not enough, time is rigid. It’s a floor plan for the day, isn’t it? You can only stay in each room so long.”

“So,” Rafferty says, “are we going to sit around and philosophize, or should we get down to it?”

Pan’s smile dims a notch. “You seem to be in more of a hurry than I am.”

“Cute baby, isn’t it?” Rafferty says.

“Adorable.” Pan raises Peep and makes a little kiss noise. Peep screws up his face, waves a fist, and starts to cry. Da rises and goes to take him, then carries him back to her chair.

“Did Da tell you where she got him?”

“Where she got him?” Pan’s smile widens again. “I’ve been familiar with those mechanics since I was, let’s see, about twelve.”

“He was handed to her,” Rafferty says. “Five days ago. By an old acquaintance of yours.”

Boo sits straighter behind the desk.

Still watching Peep, Pan says, “You think I know someone who gives away babies?”

“Well, you used to know him. His name is Wichat.”

Pan turns his head a few inches to the left and regards Rafferty as though he’s favoring his dominant eye. “You’ve been busy.” He leans back, resting part of his broad bottom on the edge of the desk. “If you wanted to know about all that, you could have talked to me.”

“You did work with Wichat.”

“Of course. I started out with him. Dozens of people could tell you that. I would have told you, if you’d asked. It’s no secret. I was a crook. There weren’t a lot of other employment opportunities for someone like me. And if you wanted to be a crook in those days, at least in the part of Bangkok I was being a crook in, you did business with Wichat. Actually, with Wichat’s boss, Chai. Is this going to be in the book?”

“Unless you can come up with something better.”

Pan seems suddenly to remember that Boo and Da are in the room. The smile returns, and he looks down at Da, who is holding Peep. The baby’s cries have faded to a damp snuffle. “Girls always look most beautiful holding babies,” he says.

Rafferty says, “Not a really contemporary point of view.”

Pan lets his gaze linger on Da for a moment, and then he says, “I’d rather it weren’t in the book, but if it is, you should be very clear on the point that I’ve had nothing to do with Wichat, or anyone like Wichat, for twenty years. I have no idea whether Wichat is-what?-giving out babies? Why would anyone give out babies?” He tugs at the crease in his sky-blue slacks. “And why tell me about it now?”

“I’m sorry,” Rafferty says. “I haven’t done this right. We’re actually here to ask for your help.”

Pan’s eyebrows climb half an inch. “Help.”

“See, this is what I think is happening. Wichat is buying babies from poor families, some of them probably Cambodian, and selling them to rich people, to farang. And he stashes the kids in the interim with female beggars. He hides them in plain sight and even makes a little extra money. Da says people give more to-”

“A woman with a baby,” Pan says with badly masked impatience. “Obviously. But how in the world do you think I can help?”

“I’m not completely sure,” Rafferty says. He leans against the wall beside the door. “Da and Peep ran away from Wichat’s guys because she was going to get raped. Boo helped them escape. And of course they have something that belongs to Wichat, which is to say Peep. So they’re on the run now, and I’m hiding them.”