Chapter Nine. When the Red Lights Sleep #2
“Rich perv.” She could tell from Tian’s expression that she looked rattled, but she wouldn’t expose that in front of this stranger. “Is that good enough for you?”
“Sure.” The woman took the bills, but didn’t look thrilled about it. “Look, I saw the girl you’re asking about. She ran out of Number Seventy-five about this time of the day. Ran in here, actually. I had to chase her out before Ma saw.”
“What did she want?”
“I don’t know what she was saying. She was a foreigner. But she seemed really sick, pale and sweating and everything, she needed a doctor. Sorry to hear she’s dead. Seems like it would have gotten her anyway, though.”
“You see the guy chasing her?”
“What, the Oily Man? Yeah. You know, I haven’t seen him around either since that day.”
“We killed him,” Tian said. “He killed one of ours.”
“Huh.” The waitress looked at her and Adeline appreciatively. “Maybe I should give some of this money back to you.”
She tucked the notes into her pocket, though, and returned to wiping down the counter, clearly dismissing them. Adeline and Tian exchanged a glance and turned to leave, which was when they found the group of Steels standing in the doorway.
They were also young, obviously roughhousing teenagers at the bottom of their pecking order, but Tian held up her hands and stepped between them and Adeline even as the Steels fanned out. “We’re leaving.”
The eldest pointed at her. They’d clearly recognized Tian by now, or else spotted the exposed tattoos on her forearm. “She’s Red Butterfly.”
The boys grew wary. Tian’s description of Red Butterfly’s reputation seemed to hold true: they dangled the threat of being crazed fire starters just near enough to keep potential rivals at bay.
It surely helped that Tian of all the girls could not have fooled you into thinking she didn’t mean business, and even now she was assessing them with a glint in her eye.
“Just visiting a friend,” she said. Adeline couldn’t tell how much of her keenness was real, but it had to work in their favor, to be thought of as wild and dangerous.
“That’s your friend?” The Steel noticed Wan Shin for the first time. “These are your friends?” he barked at her.
Tian snapped her fingers. “Your problem is with me. Since when is this Three Steel territory instead of Crocodile?”
She wasn’t like any girl Adeline had ever met, and she wasn’t like any of the usual girls these unseasoned Steel boys met, either.
They clearly didn’t know how to deal with her, but seemed to fall back on their bigger numbers and the mission they’d been sent here to accomplish.
“You haven’t heard? The Crocodile swore to Fan Ge two days ago.
It’s all ours now. Which means the price has gone up,” the Steel put to Wan Shin again.
“And we’re counting it all new. It’s going to be thirty dollars a week. ”
Shin’s jaw tightened, otherwise unfazed by the news of territorial transfer. “That’s a big increase.”
“Economy’s going up,” the boy said nonchalantly. “Tell that to the Crocodile when he kissed our feet. Geng, Long, check the register.”
As the assigned lackeys started forward, Tian caught the second boy’s arm. “Think carefully.”
The boy faltered, then sneered. “You don’t even have fire anymore.
Your conduit is—fuck!” He jerked away from Tian, revealing a raw pink imprint where Tian’s hand had been.
Shock, followed by a flash of a child’s fear: perhaps he’d heard of the Butterflies, but dismissed them like ghost stories.
There weren’t many of them, after all; they didn’t command a large territory and they didn’t chase fights.
The fire girls could have been as good as a superstition.
But the scald on his skin was now very real.
Tian flicked the hand in question, extinguishing the fire that had gleamed on her palm. “Your boss didn’t tell you everything.”
The other Steels jolted to attention, hands drifting toward what were undoubtedly concealed weapons.
Adeline froze, unsure what she should do.
The Steels would notice her eventually, even if they hadn’t recognized her loyalties straight away.
Brawling with Elaine and fantasizing about violence did not seem comparable.
But then Shin thrust out some of the money Adeline had just given her. “Stop. Just take it.”
“Shin,” Tian protested.
“I don’t want your damn fighting, Tian. I’m not going to let both of you turn my parents’ shop into a mess.”
“Smart girl,” the Steel said. He took the cash and flicked it in Tian’s direction, mimicking her earlier motion. “Don’t cause trouble.”
Tian’s jaw clenched. Shin’s intervention had put her in a precarious situation.
The boys had realized she was leashed. Suddenly the rabid dog was muzzled, and they did have strength in numbers, and if she was really going to set something on fire, wouldn’t she have done it already?
Their wariness had wriggled into the beginnings of cruel eagerness.
Adeline slipped her bracelet off—the one she’d stolen, that she’d forgotten she’d been wearing out of habit—and tossed it at their feet. “You can return this to Fan Tai Tai.”
For the first time in the entire encounter, they looked at her. Tian did, too, the furrow of her brow the only thing giving away her confusion. “Your leader?” Adeline said, as though they were slow. “Fan Ge. That belongs to his wife. She’s been looking for it. Make sure she gets it back.”
Her heart was pounding, but she kept her voice cool and disaffected.
Tussles like this worked the same everywhere.
Fire and fists were not the only form of power.
These were boys at the bottom of Three Steel’s pecking order, sent out with elbow grease to collect petty cash.
They were eager to prove themselves by stepping on those around and beneath them.
They almost certainly didn’t deal directly with their big boss.
They certainly weren’t allowed close enough to his wife to take jewelry off her wrist.
“Are you going to pick it up?” said Adeline, who clearly, somehow, was.
She didn’t look like Tian, she knew, and so they didn’t know what to do with her, either. Slowly, the Steel bent down and picked it up.
Tian released a soundless breath. She motioned for Adeline to follow, and they left the shop without fear of turning their backs. The more distance they gained from it, the more Adeline’s adrenaline turned into thrilling satisfaction.
“That was—” They came to Tian’s bike and Tian stopped abruptly, an expression like the one she’d worn outside the rogue Butterfly’s room appearing and then vanishing on her face.
“Three Steel taking over the Crocodiles,” she muttered instead, fussing with her keys.
“The Crocodile is spineless. They’ve been fighting over that stretch behind Desker Road for years, and now he caves?
Not all his men have to be happy about that. Or his fee payers, obviously.”
“Don’t tell me you have friends in the Crocodiles, too.”
“Ha. Not me. But,” Tian continued, conviction building in her voice as she went on, “there’s a Butterfly, Rong, her current boyfriend is a Crocodile.
Only problem is, we haven’t seen her since your mother died.
Mun’s been trying to track everyone down, find out where they are and what they’ve been up to.
Rong’s sister says she’s at her boyfriend’s; we don’t know where he stays.
I’ll ask Lan to look for her, they’re friends. ”
Adeline was reminded that things were going on in the gang beyond her own narrow focus. Only Tian and Pek Mun, and perhaps Christina, seemed to see it all. And her mother. Her mother must have pulled all the strings. What might now be dangling loose?
A sudden memory: her mother, after finding out Elaine’s parentage, spending enough time asking about her father’s work that Adeline had felt slighted. There was a possible connection there, but even as she tried to recall her mother’s line of questioning, she was recalling Mr. Chew instead.
“Are you okay?” Tian asked.
Adeline wanted to say no, she was still boiling, still clenching her fist and smelling his overnight breath coming down on her, but Tian would probably think it was pathetic.
They had just been friendly all night with people who did this for a living.
Tian’s respect for her had clearly just doubled after the encounter with Three Steel.
She’d get nowhere if she balked at a man grabbing her hand.
“I’m fine. I recognized one of the Desker Road customers. Have you ever heard of Chew Luen Fah?”
It got out among the Butterflies that they were asking about Desker Road.
Ji Yen supplied a rumor about a woman who had looked through one of the doors and seen her own self sitting there; Siang tipped them off onto a printing press based there that had recently narrowly escaped a pornography raid and might be disgruntled.
But they were content gossiping and didn’t ask more, perhaps didn’t dare.
It was preferable to get away; sometimes in the day, shuttled around tempering girls from flaring up, Adeline felt more like her mother’s vessel than a real person.
With Tian, she was collecting pieces of a story.
Not just Desker Road—yes, Three Steel was coming down hard on Crocodiles who weren’t willing to honor their new loyalties; yes, someone had seen the fight with Bee, confirmed the prostitute had jumped her unprovoked and Bee had caught them both on fire, but the prostitute’s body had never gone to the Sons—but also about her mother, as Madam Butterfly.