The Windup Girl(34)

There is some argument among yellow cards about whether Dog Fucker let fa' gan run too long, allowing its cauliflower growths to send enough tendrils deep into his flesh that doctors were forced to chop the whole thing off to save his life, or if the Dung Lord simply took his nose to teach him a lesson.

Dog Fucker squats beside Hock Seng. Hard black eyes. "Your Doctor Chan came to me. With a letter."

Hock Seng nods. "I want to meet with your patron."

Dog Fucker laughs slightly. "I broke her fingers and f**ked her dead for interrupting my nap."

Hock Seng keeps his face impassive. Maybe Dog Fucker is lying. Maybe he is telling the truth. It is impossible to know. Regardless, it is a tease. To see if Hock Seng will flinch. To see if he will bargain. Perhaps Doctor Chan is gone. Another name to weigh him down when he finally reincarnates. Hock Seng says, "Your patron will look favorably on the offer, I think."

Dog Fucker scratches absently at the slit of a nostril. "Why not meet me at my office, instead?"

"I like open places."

"You have people around here? More yellow cards? You think they'll make you safe?"

Hock Seng shrugs. He looks out at the ships and their sails. At the wide world beckoning. "I want to offer you and your patron a deal. A mountain of profit."

"Tell me what it is."

Hock Seng shakes his head. "No. I must speak with him in person. Him only."

"He doesn't talk to yellow cards. Maybe I'll just feed you to the red-fin plaa out there. Just like the Green Headbands did with your kind down south."

"You know who I am."

"I know who your letter says you were." Dog Fucker rubs at the edges of his nose slits, studying Hock Seng. "Here, you're just another yellow card."

Hock Seng doesn't say anything. He hands the hemp sack of money across to Dog Fucker. Dog Fucker eyes it suspiciously, doesn't take it. "What is it?"

"A gift. Look and see."

Dog Fucker is curious. But also cautious. It's a good thing to know. He isn't the sort to put his hand in a bag and come up with a scorpion. Instead, he loosens the sack and dumps it. Bundles of cash spill out, roll in the shells and dirt of low tide. Dog Fucker's eyes widen. Hock Seng keeps himself from smiling.

"Tell the Dung Lord that Tan Hock Seng, head of the Three Prosperities Trading Company has a business proposal. Deliver my note to him and you will also profit greatly."

Dog Fucker smiles. "I think perhaps that I'll simply take this money, and my men will beat you until you tell me where you hide all your paranoid yellow card cash."

Hock Seng doesn't say anything. Keeps his face impassive.

Dog Fucker says, "I know all about Laughing Chan's people here. He owes me for his disrespect."

Hock Seng is surprised that he feels no fear. He lives in fear of all things, but thuggish pi lien like Dog Fucker are not what fill his nights with terror. In the end, Dog Fucker is a businessman. He is not a white shirt, puffed on national pride or hungry for a little more respect. Dog Fucker works for money. Acts for money. He and Hock Seng are different parts of the economic organism, but underneath everything, they are brothers. Hock Seng smiles slightly as confidence builds.

"This is just a gift, for your trouble. What I propose will provide much more. For all of us." He takes out the last two items. One, a letter. "Give it to your master, sealed." The other, he hands across: a small box with its familiar universal spindle and braces, a palm-oil polymer casing in a dull shade of yellow.

Dog Fucker takes the object, turns it over. "A kink-spring?" He makes a face. "What's the point of this?"

Hock Seng smiles. "He'll know when he reads the letter." He stands and turns away, without even waiting for Dog Fucker to respond, feeling stronger and more assured than any time since the Green Headbands came and his warehouses went up in smoke and his clipper ships went sliding down into the ocean depths. In this moment, Hock Seng feels like a man. He walks straighter, his limp forgotten.

It's impossible to know if Dog Fucker's people will follow him and so he walks slowly, knowing that both Dog Fucker's and Laughing Chan's men surround him, a floating ring of surveillance as he works his way down the alleys and cuts into deeper slums, until, at last, Laughing Chan is there, waiting for him, smiling.

"They let you go," he says.

Hock Seng pulls out more money. "You did well. He knows it was your men, though." He gives Laughing Chan an extra roll of baht. "Pay him off with this."

Laughing Chan smiles at the pile of money. "This is twice what I need for that. Even Dog Fucker likes to use us when he doesn't want to risk smuggling SoyPRO over from Koh Angrit."

"Take it anyway."

Laughing Chan shrugs and pockets it. "It's very kind of you. With the anchor pads shut down, we can use the extra baht."

Hock Seng is turning away, but at Laughing Chan's words he turns back.

"What did you say about the anchor pads?"

"They're shut down. The white shirts raided them last night. Everything's locked tight."

"What happened?"

Laughing Chan shrugs. "I heard they burned everything. Sent it all up in smoke."

Hock Seng doesn't pause to ask any more. He turns and runs, as fast as his old bones will carry him. Cursing himself all the way. Cursing that he was a fool and didn't put his nose to the wind, that he let himself be distracted from bare survival by the urgent wish to do something more, to reach ahead.