The Windup Girl(42)

"Look who's here," Quoile mutters.

Everyone turns. Richard Carlyle, in a perfectly pressed linen suit, is climbing the stairs. He takes off his hat as he reaches the shade, fanning himself.

"I f**king hate that man," Lucy mutters. She lights another pipe, draws hard.

"What's he smiling about?" Otto asks.

"Hell if I know. He lost a dirigible, didn't he?"

Carlyle pauses in the shade, scans the patrons across the room, nods at all of them. "Pretty hot one," he calls out.

Otto stares at him, red-faced and bullet-eyed, and mutters, "If it hadn't been for his f**king politicking, I'd be a rich man today."

"Don't be dramatic." Anderson pops another ngaw into his mouth. "Lucy, give the man a puff of your pipe. I don't feel like having Sir Francis kick us out into the heat for brawling."

Lucy's eyes have gone glassy with opium, but she waves the pipe in Otto's general direction. Anderson reaches across and plucks it from her fingers and gives it to Otto, before standing and picking up his empty glass. "Anyone else want something?" Desultory shakes of the head.

Carlyle grins as he arrives at the bar. "You get poor old Otto sorted out?"

Anderson glances back. "Lucy smokes serious opium. I doubt he'll be able to walk, let alone fight anyone."

"Devil's drug, that."

Anderson toasts him with his empty glass. "That, and booze." He peers over the edge of the bar. "Where the hell's Sir Francis?"

"I thought you were here to answer that question."

"I guess not," Anderson says. "You lose much?"

"Some."

"Really? You don't seem bothered." Anderson gestures back at the rest of the Phalanx. "Everyone else is pissing and moaning about how you keep interfering with politics, cozying up with Akkarat and the Trade Ministry. But here you are smiling ear to ear. You could be a Thai."

Carlyle shrugs. Sir Francis, elegantly dressed, carefully coiffed, emerges from a back room. Carlyle asks for whiskey and Anderson holds up his own empty glass.

"No ice," Sir Francis says. "The mulie men want more money to run the pump."

"Pay them, then."

Sir Francis shakes his head as he takes Anderson's glass. "If you bargain when they squeeze your balls, they will only squeeze again. And I cannot bribe the Environment Ministry to give me access to the coal grid like you farang."

He turns away and pulls down a bottle of Khmer whiskey, pours an immaculate shot. Anderson wonders if any of the rumors about the man are true.

Otto, now mumbling incoherently about "fugging dribigles," claims that Sir Francis was an old Chaopraya, a high assistant to the crown, forced out of the palace in a power play. This theory has as much merit as the idea that he is former servant of the Dung Lord, retired, or that he is a Khmer prince, displaced and living incognito ever since the Thai Kingdom was enlarged to swallow the East. Everyone agrees he must have been of high rank-it's the only thing that explains his disdain for his patrons.

"Pay now," he says as he sets the shots on the bar.

Carlyle laughs. "You know our credit's good."

Sir Francis shakes his head. "You both lost plenty at the anchor pads. Everyone knows it. Pay now."

Carlyle and Anderson shell out coins. "I thought we had a better relationship than that," Anderson complains.

"This is politics." Sir Francis smiles. "Maybe you are here tomorrow. Maybe you are swept away like Expansion plastic on a beach. There are whisper sheets on all the street corners, calling for Captain Jaidee to be made a chaopraya advisor to the palace. If he rises, then all you farang…" he makes a shooing motion with his hand, "all gone." He shrugs. "General Pracha's radio stations are calling Jaidee a tiger and hero, and the student associations have been calling for the Trade Ministry to be closed down and placed under the white shirts. The Trade Ministry lost face. Farang and Trade are close like farang and fleas."

"Nice."

Sir Francis shrugs. "You do smell."

Carlyle scowls. "Everyone smells. It's the goddamn hot season."

Anderson intercedes. "I suppose Trade is seething, losing face like that." He takes a sip of the warm whiskey and grimaces. He used to like room-temperature liquor, before he came here.

Sir Francis counts their coins into his cash box. "Minister Akkarat is still smiling, but the Japanese want reparations for their losses and the white shirts will never give them. So either Akkarat will pay to make up for what the Tiger of Bangkok has done, or he will lose face to the Japanese as well."

"You think the Japanese will leave?"

Sir Francis makes a face of disgust. "The Japanese are like the calorie companies, always looking for a way in. They will never go away." He moves to the other end of the bar, leaving them once again isolated.

Anderson pulls out a ngaw and offers it Carlyle. "Want one?"

Carlyle takes the fruit and holds it up for examination. "What the hell is this?"

"Ngaw."

"It reminds me of cockroaches." He makes a face. "You're an experimental bastard. I'll give you that." He pushes the ngaw back across to Anderson and carefully wipes his hand on his trousers.