Pan lets his eyes drift back down to Da and Peep. Behind him, Boo looks past him at Rafferty, his eyebrows elevated in a question. Pan says, “Why? Why are you hiding them?”

“I owe Boo a favor. So I guess the question is whether you can do anything, considering that you used to be buddies with Wichat, to get him to let go of Da and Peep, just stop searching for them.”

Pan surveys the room, not really looking at anything. “I suppose what he really wants is the baby. Why not return it to him?”

Da says immediately, “No.”

“Right,” Pan says. “Of course not. Well, you say he’s for sale, right? If it’s just about money, if Wichat just doesn’t want to lose his profit, then I can probably do something, maybe compensate him. How much is he getting?”

“Thirty to fifty thousand U.S.”

“You’re joking.”

“That’s my best guess,” Rafferty says.

“Still,” Pan says, “even if I bought Peep for Miss…Miss Da here, Wichat might be more worried about what she could tell people. Especially if he’s making that much money.”

“I think he is,” Boo says. “Both making that much money and worried about Da talking to people.”

Pan’s eyes flick to Boo as though he’s surprised at the certainty in the boy’s voice. “So, you see, it’s a little awkward. If I talk to Wichat, let’s say to offer to buy Peep, then he knows that I’m in touch with these kids. It opens up a raft of questions. That’s awkward. He and I aren’t friends anymore.”

“If you say so,” Rafferty says.

“Let me think about it,” Pan says. “They’re safe for the moment, I suppose?”

“I think so.”

“Would they be safer here?”

“I don’t know,” Rafferty says, watching Pan’s eyes. “Maybe.”

“Well, where are they staying now?”

“In my apartment house. An empty unit, down on the fourth floor.”

“Do you have security? Is there a doorman or anything?”

“It’s not that kind of apartment house,” Rafferty says.

“Maybe here, then,” Pan says. “If there’s one thing I have a lot of, it’s guards.”

Rafferty says, “What do you guys think?”

“I like it at your place,” Boo says. It’s what Rafferty told him to say if the question came up. “We don’t get in anybody’s way.” He looks at Da, who nods.

“Fine,” Pan says. “I’ll think about Wichat. I’m sure something will come to me.”

“That’s all we can ask,” Rafferty says. He pushes himself away from the wall. “You kids mind waiting for me outside? You can walk down to the village. I’ll be out in a minute.” He turns to Pan. “That okay with you?”

“Sure. Just don’t get too close to the pigs. Shinawatra can be aggressive.”

Da says, “I know all about pigs.” Then she says, “Shinawatra? Like the prime minister?”

“I’ll explain it later.” Rafferty turns his back to Pan and opens the door to let them out. With his left hand, he pulls the automatic from his pants, and as Boo passes him, Rafferty glances down at it. Boo follows Rafferty’s eyes and takes the gun without missing a step. When Rafferty closes the door and turns back to Pan, nothing in the big man’s face suggests that he registered the transfer.

“So?” Pan says. He turns and goes behind his desk. He sits and pulls a drawer open.

“Da tell you about how they turned off her town’s river?”

“Actually, the boy told me. Terrible, terrible.” He takes the tube of lip balm out of the drawer and applies it. “The sort of thing that should never be allowed to happen.”

“What can you do about it?”

“Me?” Pan drops the tube back into the drawer. “I have no formal power.”

“And if you did?”

“Oh, well. If we’re going to be hypothetical, then hypothetically, I’d prevent it.”

“Would you give them their river back?”

Pan shakes his head in irritation. “It’s done. It’s over. What I’d do is make sure it never happens again.”

“What do you mean, over? A few bulldozers, an afternoon’s work, they’d have their river back. And how long could it take, how much could it cost, to rebuild a few shacks like the ones you put up in that postcard village in your front yard?”

“That’s not the point. The money’s been spent, the golf course has been built, probably a hotel put up. The people who did this are powerful. They’re not going to let go of it. They’ve got clout.”

“In short,” Rafferty says, “it wouldn’t be expedient.”

“You’re oversimplifying, and you know it. The point is to prevent it next time.”

Rafferty gives it a minute, turns and takes a circuit of the office. When he’s facing Pan again, he says, “So. How’d you burn your hands?”

“Sooner or later,” Pan says. He sounds weary. “I knew you’d bump up against that sooner or later. I told you I was in protection, right?”

“Right. With Wichat’s boss, Chai.”

“Chai,” Pan says. “That was a guy. Balls of steel. That was when we had real gangsters, not store dummies like Wichat.”

“Wichat means business.”

“Yeah? You talk to him?”

“Sure. I’ve talked to half a dozen people on the yellow list. A lot of them have wondered how you got burned.”

“Right, the burns. One of the women I was protecting had a three-wok restaurant on the curb, and some guys who had wandered onto the wrong block tried to rob her. I was just down the street. Protection, right? If I’m extorting money for protection, the least I can do is protect them. So I…um, got involved, and while I was taking care of the first guy, the second guy threw a wok at me. Full of hot oil.” Pan opens the top two buttons of his shirt and shows Rafferty an expanse of shiny, hairless flesh. “So naturally, like a total idiot, I reached out and tried to catch it. Not just my hands, but all the way up my arms and across my chest. Hurt like nothing else in my whole life.”

“So,” Rafferty says, “it happened back when you were working with Wichat. Before the Mounds of Venus.”

“That’s right.” Rafferty holds Pan’s gaze until Pan looks down at his shirtfront. He rebuttons the shirt and pulls a cigar out of his pocket. He centers it in the moist-looking mouth and fires up the smoke.

When Rafferty feels as if the silence has been stretched far enough to snap, he says, “Uh-huh.”

Pan drags on the cigar with every evidence of being completely absorbed in it, but when he finally looks up at Rafferty, he has the eyes of someone who suspects that the guy across the card table has just filled the holes in his straight. “You asked Ravi about Snakeskin,” he says.

“Actually, I didn’t. I just said the word to see whether it would persuade him to let me in. And it did.”

“How interesting,” Pan says. “You know, I’m beginning to wonder whose side you’re on.”

“What a coincidence,” Rafferty says. “So am I.”

41

Hang on to the gun,” Rafferty says. “Just in case. I’ll get it later.”

The three of them are walking the curving path to the front gate, since no swans were volunteered. Da carries Peep in both arms, staring openmouthed at the garden gleaming in the sun to her right. Boo has the gun wedged into the pocket of his too-large jeans, covered by the tail of his shirt.

“Why do I want a gun?” Boo says. “We’re leaving.”

“I’m leaving first, and you’re waiting about five minutes. There’s someone watching me, and I don’t want him seeing you. I don’t want anyone to see you.”

“Why not?”

“Tell you later.”

Instead of answering, Boo reaches over and slides a fingertip down the side of Da’s neck. She shrugs as though there’s a spider crawling on her, but the smile gives her away. “But the gun?” Boo asks.

“In case they try to keep you here.”

Da turns away from the ruby light of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and looks across Boo at Rafferty. “Do you think they will?”

“No,” Rafferty says. “But right now I can’t come up with a single thing that would surprise me.”