The Hot Countries: A Poke Rafferty Thriller (Poke Rafferty, 7, Band 7) - Hardcover

Hallinan, Timothy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1616954469 ISBN 13: 9781616954468

Verlag: Soho Press Inc, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

Back when Poke Rafferty first arrived in Bangkok to write a travel guide, some of the old-timers in the Expat Bar on Patpong Road helped him make sense of the city. Now these men—many of whom have been living in Southeast Asia since the Vietnam War—have grown old and, in some cases, frail. When a talkative stranger named Arthur Varney turns up at the Expat Bar, they accept him without suspicion, failing to see that he’s actually using them to get to Poke.

Varney wants two things: money Poke doesn’t have and a person Poke is unwilling to hand over. It quickly becomes apparent that there’s nothing Varney won’t do to secure his goals. As his actions threaten the foundation of Poke’s life in Thailand, the aging men of the Expat Bar discover that they might still be a force to reckon with.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Timothy Hallinan has been nominated for the Edgar, Nero, Shamus, and Macavity awards. He is the author of eighteen widely praised books, including The Fear Artist, For the Dead, Crashed, Little Elvises, The Fame Thief, King Maybe, Fields Where They Lay, and Herbie’s Game, which won the Lefty Award for Best Humorous Mystery. After years of working in the television and music industries, he now writes full-time. He divides his time between California and Thailand.

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It’s been a couple of minutes since Varney checked his watch—one of the thick, heavy steel ones that would probably still be ticking after the asteroid hit—and left, at about the same time he seems to leave every night, around ten. Rafferty checks his own watch, and from her station in front of the bourbon the barmaid, Toots, who has been pouring these men’s drinks since the late 1960s, says, “Why you not home? Kwan have baby, yes?”
     Kwan is Rose’s Thai name, which, like Toots’s, has receded so far into the mists of time that it takes Poke a second to understand the question. “Not yet,” he says. “Six months more.”
    With the air of someone forced to state the obvious, Toots curves her arms a few inches from her stomach and says, “Have in here.”
    “Yes, right. We’re at the throwing-up stage.”
    “Three month,” Toots says. She pokes the inside of her right cheek with her tongue, searching for something, and sucks at a tooth. “Should stop now.”
    “She’ll throw up as long as she can,” Rafferty says. “She’s hanging on to every phase. This may be the world’s first two-year pregnancy.”
    Toots shakes her head, and her hair, graying, permed into thick, Brillo-stiff curls—black when Rafferty met her—wobbles a tiny bit, like molded Jell-O. “So why you come here? Should be at your house. Taking care.”
    “I’m hiding from the television,” Rafferty says. “She and Miaow have bought bootlegs of every DVD the BBC ever made about English people who live in big houses and hate each other. Downton Abbey, Upstairs Downstairs, The Forsyte Saga, Pride and Prejudice, practically the complete works of Anthony Trollope. Just one well-bred snub after another.”
    “Yes?” Leon Hofstedler says, his eyebrows tied in a knot of puzzlement. “For what purpose? This is not what Thai girls watch. Thai girls, they want to see that . . . that doll with the knife—”
    “Chucky.” Campeau accompanies the information with an apparently involuntary glance at the door, as though he’s afraid Arthur Varney will barge in from the street to contradict him.
    “Not my Thai girls,” Rafferty says. “What they like is servants and people with titles and huge dinners with eight courses and gowns and big, clunky jewelry and feathered hats. And Colin Firth, can’t forget Colin Firth.”
    “Be a great setting for the next Chucky,” the man who might be named Ron says. “Chucky Abbey.” He runs his fingers self-appreciatively through the silver waves of his hair, something he does often. The hair, Hofstedler said once to Poke, is all the man has left.
    “Anything would be an improvement,” Rafferty says. “The people in these shows are asleep when they’re awake. They sneer at their own reflections. Rose is developing a British accent.”
    “But yes,” Hofstedler says, nodding as he catches up to the conversation. “This is true. Rose is with child, and Miaow is in school. What year she is in now?”
    “Eighth,” Rafferty says.
    There’s a silence while these men, who have been on the edges of Rafferty’s life for more than seven years, consider the implications. Rafferty uses the time to look, without much nostalgia, around the room. It’s shaped like an ambitious bowling lane, no more than fourteen feet across and about fifty deep, its shape dictated by the fact that it was wedged by a voracious developer into what had been a sliver of space between two go-go bars, My Big Honey and Yellow Bellies, both long gone. One of them is still offering go-go, now under the name Miles of Smiles, while the other sells plastic leather goods to the easily fooled. The room is so narrow there’s barely room for the stained, battered bar with Toots behind it, plus the usual mirrored display of mislabeled whiskeys, the beer and soft-drink taps, a small sink, and a blender that’s used almost exclusively for the Growing Younger Man’s complicated smoothies, mostly uneasy mixes of alcohol and health-preserving algae. The place smells of old beer, neglected dentistry, and, thanks to the rain, wet wool.     Eight stools crowd the bar. Shoved against the opposite wall are four tiny tables that have been turned into booths by the addition of high-backed, plastic-covered, pumpkin-colored banquette seats of conspicuous cheapness. When Rafferty arrived in Bangkok, one of the booths was essentially reserved for a guy named Mac, the only openly gay member of the Expat Bar regulars, but Mac has been dead for three years now. Just as Rafferty thinks of Mac, whom he had liked, Bob Campeau puts into words the thought that was triggered in many of them by the information that Miaow is an eighth-grader.
    Campeau says, “Goddamn, I’m old.” He carefully pats his baroque comb-over as Ron, if that’s his name, rakes his gleaming silver locks again and Hofstedler picks up a giant brandy snifter with a loose scattering of paper money in it and slides it down the bar with a grunt. He’s been putting on weight again, which, for someone with his medical history, is dangerous.
    “Five hundred baht,” Hofstedler says. “Two-fifty for the swearword and two-fifty for talking about age.”
    Campeau says, and it’s close to a snarl, “You were thinking the same thing I was. And ‘goddamn’ isn’t fucking swearing. There, now I said something you can fucking fine me for.” He pulls out some paper money and drops it into the snifter. It looks short even from where Rafferty’s sitting, but nobody calls Campeau on it. These men, who once considered themselves the kings of Bangkok, are running out of money.
    “Eighth grade,” the Growing Younger Man says. He takes a drink of something that’s way too green for everyone else’s comfort. “Hard to believe.”
    Rafferty hoists his own glass and drains the warm beer it contains, gone flat now. “I know. I still think of her as four feet tall with a part in her hair, and there she is, sitting at home watching Debrett’s Peerage on Ice and planning to be an actress.”
    “That’s a rough life for a kid, acting,” the guy with the hair says, and the solemnity of his tone suggests that the thought has never before been put into words. “There’s a lot of rejection.”
    “Yeah, well, we give her a lot of acceptance. In fact, she’s got a play coming up.”
    “When?” This is Hofstedler, who actually sounds interested.
    “I don’t know. What day is this?”
    “Thursday?” the man who might be named Ron suggests.
    No one disagrees, so Rafferty says, “A week from tomorrow. At her school. It plays Friday through Sunday.”
    “This play is named what?” Hofstedler asks.
    “It’s an old one. Small Town.”
    “But I know this play,” Hofstedler says. “The girl dies at the end, yes? So...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Soho Press Inc
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1616954469
• ISBN 13: 9781616954468
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 328
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Soho Press; https://sohopress.com/the-best-of-soho-press-2021/; ; 4 rue Fernand Laguide; Corbeil Essonnes; Ile de France; 91100; Frankreich