I pulled Dox aside. The man spilled to his knees. He let out a long, agonized groan and pitched forward, but managed to get his arms out and caught himself before his head hit the pavement. There wasn’t much blood-the artery was transected, and the bleeding would be mostly into his chest and lungs-but there was no question that he would be unconscious in seconds, and dead shortly after that. I stepped in and slashed him twice across the forearms and he collapsed onto his face. He lay there, moaning and writhing.

I saw that I’d gotten blood on my hands-from his mouth or his chest, I didn’t know. I pulled a handkerchief from my back pocket and cleaned up the best I could. I handed the handkerchief to Dox and gestured for him to do the same. His eyes were wide and he seemed a little stunned, but he used the handkerchief. We’d be more thorough later.

One more thing. I glanced inside the open sliding door and saw what I was looking for: cell phone tracking equipment, strapped with duct tape to one of the back seats. Other than the equipment, the interior was clean. I used the handkerchief to open the van’s passenger door, then to pop the glove compartment, hoping to find registration or some other clue to Perry Mason’s identity. There was a first aid kit inside. I opened it, and saw vials of atropine and naloxone, and syringes. Interesting. But no registration, nothing to identify the people who had rented the van.

“Come on,” I said to Dox, who had been uncharacteristically quiet for the last minute or so. “We need to get out of here.”

We walked briskly across the street to the Lumpini Park side, where it was comfortingly dark. I glanced back at the sidewalk in front of the bars as we moved. The patrons had all gone inside. The two men on the sidewalk weren’t moving. We cut over to a sub-soi paralleling Ratchadamri, then started walking south and looking for a cab. Under the reflected glow of a collapsing storefront sign, I paused and looked at Dox, who still hadn’t said a word in a record-breakingly long time. “Hey,” I said quietly. “Look at me. Am I okay? Do I have any blood on me? Anything?”

He looked me up and down, then shook his head. “No. You’re okay.”

I gave him a once-over, as well, and nodded. “You are, too.”

He didn’t say anything in response. I never thought I’d be concerned that Dox was being too quiet, but it wasn’t like him.

“You all right?” I asked.

He closed his eyes, took two deep breaths, leaned forward, and vomited.

I looked around us. There weren’t any pedestrians on this section of road. Even if there had been a few, I doubted they’d be overly interested. It wouldn’t be the first time anyone had seen a farang who’d had a bit too much to drink.

When he was done, he wiped his mouth and straightened. “Damn, that’s embarrassing,” he said.

We started moving again. “Don’t worry about it,” I told him.

“That’s never happened to me, man, never.”

“It can happen to anyone.”

“Did it ever happen to you?”

I paused, then admitted, “No. But I don’t know that’s something to be proud of.”

“I just didn’t know you were going to do that, stab him like that. If I’d known, I could have gotten ready.”

“Sorry. Couldn’t warn you without warning him.”

“Why’d you slash his arms, man? I saw where you cut him, he was already dead for sure.”

“I wanted it to look like he went down fighting, not being interrogated. If his people think he was interrogated, they’ll assume he gave up information. I want to keep them in the dark.”

“So if he was fighting…”

“Then he would have defensive wounds on his forearms.”

“Oh. All right. Glad you weren’t just being sadistic. Is that why you didn’t take out his eye?”

“That’s why.”

“Would you have?”

I paused, then said, “Yeah.”

“Damn. I was afraid you were going to.”

I could tell Dox didn’t have much experience with hostile interrogations. I thought he ought to count himself lucky for that.

A cab came by and we flagged it down. I told the driver to take us to Chong Nonsi sky train station.

As we drove away and it began to seem as though we’d made it, the enormity of what had just happened started to settle in. Yeah, Dox had helped me out, but his stupidity had caused the problem in the first place. I had told him about the damn phone. Told him specifically. Why couldn’t he listen? What was so hard about turning off a cell phone? I tried not to say anything, thinking it pointless at the moment, but then it started coming out anyway.

“What did I tell you about that fucking phone?” I whispered. “What did I tell you?”

He looked at me, his expression darkening. “Look, man, I am absolutely not in the mood.”

“There’s equipment that can triangulate on a cell phone. They had it in that van. It’s accurate to about twenty-five feet. Tiara, the lady-boy who liked you for yourself? Her job was probably to go to the adjacent bars to help narrow it down.”

“How was I supposed to know that? You didn’t know either, not until after.”

“Is it on now? Is it still on?”

He blanched and squirmed forward in his seat to reach into his pocket. He pulled out his phone, flipped it open, and pressed a button. It issued its cheery farewell melody and powered off.

“Why?” I asked. “Why would you leave that thing on?”

“Look, man, I’ve got clients, okay? There are people who need to reach me.”

“Not when we’re operational!” I paused, then said, “Clients, my ass. It was a girl, wasn’t it? Or girls.”

His nostrils flared. “What if it was?”

“You just opened a tunnel-sized hole in our security, while we’re operational, when we know we’ve got people looking for us, to get laid!”

“You know, not everyone enjoys your well-developed sense of solitude, partner. I like a little companionship from time to time, yeah.”

“They can use voice mail!”

“All right, I get the point! I made a mistake, I admit it, okay? What more do you want from me?”

I started to say something, then got a grip on myself. He was right, there was no point in playing I-told-you-so. And then I felt bad. He had just saved my ass back there with that chair.

I closed my eyes and exhaled. “I’m sorry. Shit like what just happened makes me cranky, okay? Usually there’s no one around for me to take it out on.”

There was a pause. Then he said, “I’m sorry, too. It was a dumb mistake. You were right.”

“What happened, anyway? Where did you go? I thought something had happened to you.”

He grinned, obviously coming back to himself. “Is that your way of telling me you care? ’Cause it gives me a warm feeling, it really does.”

I looked at him. “I think I liked it better when you were puking.”

He chuckled. “I just walked across the street to Lumpini to take a leak. I heard you shout, but it still took me a minute to cut off the stream and get Nessie put away.”

Before I could think better of it, I asked, “ ‘Nessie’?”

“You know, the Loch Ness Monster. I had a girlfriend once who named my…”

“I get it, I get it.”

“Anyway, I came running as fast as I could. Why’d you follow me out, anyway?”

I told him about the feeling I’d gotten about “Tiara” being a set-up.

“Damn, son,” he said, “you are good. I have to admit, that whole thing went right by me. I promise I’ll never call you paranoid again.”

The cab pulled up in front of Chong Nonsi station. We got out and watched it pull away. “You see a sewer?” I asked, looking around. “We need to dump the knives. And the handkerchief.”

“Dump them?”

“Yeah. We don’t want to be carrying anything that would connect us with a recent multiple homicide, do we?”

“Partner, I’ll have you know that the knives in question are a Benchmade AFCK and a Fred Perrin La Griffe. These are high-quality instruments of destruction and not so easy to come by. It would be wasteful in the extreme to ‘dump’ them.”