Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller

But to the boy this alley is as good as a compass. He knows precisely how many steps it is to the busy brightness of the boulevard. He can feel on the surface of his skin the open space of the smaller alleys that branch off to the left and right. He could tell you without looking how many stories make up the building at his back.

It’s just one of the thousands of alleys in the boy’s mental navigation system, as safe or as dangerous as the person he shares it with. The person he shares it with now is definitely dangerous, but probably not under these circumstances.

He wears a polo shirt and a pair of cheap slacks, robbed of their crease by Bangkok ’s damp heat. Barely taller than the boy, the man is as wide and unyielding as a closed door. The square face is so flat it seems to have been slammed repeatedly against a wall. The man’s eyes scan the boy’s face as though they’re trying to scour the skin away.

The boy says, “You’re lying. I saw his wallet when he paid me.”

Behind the door-shaped man is another man, taller and more slender, but equally hard-faced. The taller man has both hands wrapped firmly around the elbow of a third man, who studies the concrete beneath his feet as though he’s looking for the faint lines that will betray a secret door.

The third man is handcuffed, his arms behind him.

“It’s full, but it’s mostly ones,” the door-shaped man says. “Here. Look for yourself,”

The wallet he extends has been taken from the handcuffed man. It is sticky, damp with the sweat of heat and fear. The boy doesn’t touch it. “Ones now,” he says. “But tens and twenties before.”

The man in handcuffs hears the argument without understanding a word. He speaks German and English, but no Thai. His face is blank with the sheer effort of running mentally through all the things he might have done, all the choices he might have made, dozens of them, large and small-anything that would not have led him to this minute. This minute when his life, his life as he has come to know it, ends.

“Look at it, damn you,” says the door-shaped man.

The boy says, “One hundred dollars.”

“You little shit,” the door-shaped man says. A scuff of shoe on concrete draws his attention, and two children enter the alley from the even narrower passage that runs off to the left. He turns back to the boy and gives the wallet a shake. “Are you saying I’m lying?”

The boy looks past the wallet, at the man’s eyes. “One hundred,” he says.

The man stares at him, then nods abruptly, as though agreeing with himself about something. He shoves the wallet into his hip pocket. “In that case,” he says, “fuck off.” He starts to turn to go, but the boy’s hand lands on his arm, and the man yanks his arm away as though the boy carried disease.

He brings the arm back, as if to hit the boy, but then his eyes go past the boy’s face and settle on something behind him. Four children have come into the alley from the boulevard. Behind them are three more.

The taller man, the one holding the prisoner’s arm, feels a presence at his back. He glances over his shoulder. Three children stand there, although he could not have said where they came from. He’s almost certain the alley dead-ends behind him. He licks his lips and says, “Uhhh, Chit…”

“One hundred,” the boy says. “Now. In one minute, two hundred.”

Half a dozen children come out of the alley to the right.

The children are ragged and dirty, their hair matted, their upper lips caked with sweat and snot. Many of them are barefoot, their feet so filthy it looks like they are wearing boots. Some of them are only eight or nine, and some are in their early teens. They say nothing, just stand there looking wide-eyed at Chit, the door-shaped man.

There are fifteen or twenty in all. Over the hum of traffic from the boulevard, Chit can hear them breathe. Three more appear at the alley’s mouth.

The boy says, “Thirty seconds.”

Chit draws his lips back, baring his teeth as though he is about to take a bite out of the boy’s throat. His hand goes to his pocket and emerges with a wad of twenties. With his eyes fixed on the boy’s, he counts off five of them, holds them out, and drops them to the ground.

The boy bends down and picks them up. “Thank you,” he says, as politely as if they’d been neatly folded and handed to him in an envelope. He puts them into his pocket and turns to go.

“Wait,” Chit says. The boy pauses, but the other children are already melting away. “Tomorrow night.”

The boy says, “No. There are other police, not as greedy as you.”

“Try it,” Chit says. “See how long you live.”

The boy turns back to him. “I could say the same to you.” He looks up and down the alley, taking in the remaining children. “They could be anywhere,” he says. “Any time. Waiting for you.”

Chit surveys the upraised faces, smells the dirt and sweat. He raises both hands, palms out. “All right, all right. No more bargaining. Fifteen percent off the top.” The boy is impassive. “Twenty,” Chit says.