Chapter Eleven. the Oldest Religion in the World #2
Pek Mun was practically the only one who cared about politics.
The girls had a god more tangible and demanding than “progress,” and “progress” didn’t apply to them anyway, it was for regular people who would dislike them no matter who was running the country.
And Pek Mun was a hypocrite—she should be more worried about Red Butterfly’s own leader instead.
Instead of votes, though, here the rally was being loudly encouraged to nominate winners with dollar bills stuffed in salacious places.
Attention roaming between the rowdy show and the crowd, Adeline finally spotted Tian, and when their eyes met Tian beckoned at her.
Adeline wove her way over to where Tian was leaning against a pillar, looking pleased. She was alone; if she’d met up with Rong, it had been quickly concluded. “The Buaya Putih’s agreed to meet us.”
White Crocodile. “The Crocodile conduit?” Adeline asked, as a cheer went up: a performer was currently demonstrating improper uses of a hammer.
“No, the mamasan of their oldest brothel, that shares the back alley with Desker Road. She’s not a fan of Three Steel, and she’s agreed to speak with us tonight.”
“What, now?”
Tian smirked. “You have something better to do?”
Adeline rolled her eyes. “Shut up,” she said. “Let’s go.”
The brothel of the White Crocodile was marked by a red plaque, but otherwise nondescript, sitting in between a frog porridge shop and a sundry.
A man slipped out of the door even as they approached, shirt soaked through with sweat.
Even spent he looked hard at Adeline, until a sharp word from Tian sent him scurrying away.
The inside of the brothel was clearly attempting the idea of a Shanghai lounge.
Worn chinoiserie bled over the walls; twisting dragons with chipped scales were incorporated in every longitudinal feature.
The only illumination came from an abundance of lanterns hanging from the ceiling, giving the room a spotted oblong collection of orange light.
Four voluptuous girls in colorful cheongsams lounged on velvet sofas with rusting gold edges. “What do you want?” the oldest-looking one of them said, when the Butterflies entered. She squinted at Tian and became immediately cagey. “Red Butterfly?”
“We’re here to see your boss.”
After a few exchanged looks, the first girl waved at one of the younger ones. “Go get her.”
While waiting, one of the other two gave a dramatic sigh. “You’re going to scare any customer looking in.” She pulled her long legs up onto the chaise, making her split skirt fall in a way that made Adeline blush. “Who’s going to pay for the lost jobs?”
Tian withdrew several bills. “For your incredibly valuable time—and your secrecy.”
She got a coquettish smile in return. “Oh, don’t worry, hor tiap, the bastards won’t get a word from me.”
The oldest girl grinned, reaching over for her share.
“Maybe we should be asking you to protect us instead, if you give out gifts so easily.” She had a sharp look to her, despite her teasing.
“Seems like Mama wouldn’t be opposed,” she added in a low voice.
She straightened as clicking heels down the hallway announced the arrival of the mamasan herself.
The woman that swept into the room was in her forties or fifties, in a black Peranakan kebaya and with her hair in a chignon.
She wore pearls, seemingly real, and looked for all purposes like a woman who knew how to keep herself.
Yet her age next to her girls’ was evident, the gulf of twenty or thirty years all the more stark for the fact that all the women that had come to occupy Adeline’s new world were fairly young.
The Butterflies, the dolls, the tough-looking long-nailed girlfriends that occasionally hung around other kongsi coffee shops—there was not an image of older women, as though they simply ceased to exist.
“Stop getting in my girls’ way,” the Buaya said. “Follow me.”
She led them to a room on the second floor clearly used for entertainment. There was a sideboard for drinks and platters, a gramophone, several carved teak chaises, a hanging of Javanese batik, and an erhu propped up in the corner. Almost fondly, Tian plucked a couple of its strings.
“You play?” the Buaya said incredulously.
“I was raised for a time as a pei pa zai.”
“Hard to believe, looking at you. With who? Tiger Aw? That bitch. No wonder you ran off.” But then the Buaya peered closer at Tian, and a realization clicked in her slightly rheumy eyes. “Oh. You’re her runaway. What was it, a few years ago? Madam Butterfly claimed you.”
Tian looked wary. “I didn’t know that was well known.”
“Well, we had to close ranks, didn’t we? Couldn’t have all our girls thinking that Butterfly woman would free them from their debts.”
“That’s in the past. I’m not trying to fight with the Crocodiles now.”
“And yet here you are, poking at Three Steel’s business.” The Buaya rang a handbell on the sideboard, summoning a girl of maybe thirteen to come running in. “Get us the baijiu, Mui.” Tian watched the girl bow and head off.
A lacquer box on the sideboard was opened, a cigar removed. “You have a knife?”
Tian did; at the Buaya’s offering, she took the cigar and cut the end with a swift clip, then lit it with two fingers before returning it.
The mamasan looked satisfied. “Maybe you were trained properly. And you,” she said, taking Adeline in with a rapid, professional assessment.
“Where did they find you? Your skin is like a lily.”
She poured them cups of wine when Mui returned. “I heard about the business with the Desker girl and the fire. Nasty. You having a lot of problems with that these days?”
They were certainly having less. As Adeline grew comfortable, the goddess’s power felt more reined in.
It was clear that the girls around Adeline became more stable, which perhaps also accounted for why they so often hung around her.
But truth was a currency, and Tian didn’t need to tell her any of that.
“You have a reputation for being good to your girls,” Tian responded instead.
“They tell you things, don’t they. About Desker Road? ”
The mamasan smiled like she knew she was being flattered and had accepted the offer.
“Oh, yes. Something Tiger Aw would know nothing about, and that’s where she’s weak.
You have the girls to your ear and you have the secrets of all the men they see—and some of those they don’t.
I’m sure you know. Little Mui has overheard secrets the police would give their arms to know, and all she does is serve drinks. ”
“So what have you heard? Or seen?”
“You know there are habits around here, Ang Tian. Certain men patronize certain houses in certain numbers. In my thirty-five years, I have never truly seen that change. Now I am losing regular customers. I do not know who runs the houses on Desker Road any longer. They do not solicit, they do not open their doors, and yet wealthy men are emptying their wallets there. Something is unnatural. Girls are girls; some are prettier or younger or more charming than others, but in the end they have never been that unique.”
The woman spoke as if she were not one of those girls, or at least had not once been.
Adeline wondered if this was what it was to manage to grow old around here—to have to become something else entirely.
There was this woman, there was Pek Mun’s infamous mother, there was perhaps even Adeline’s mother.
They must have begun as one of many, easily interchangeable.
To become irreplaceable, to be known for a name of their own, to wield power, they had to set themselves apart. It was, it seemed, lonely.
“We see them in the windows sometimes. The superstitious ones are calling them faeries, but I don’t believe that kind of thing.
Sometimes new girls are brought in. Only three types come out.
” The Buaya held up three long manicured fingers, painted a deep green. “Three Steel, bodies, and the Needle.”
“Bodies?” Tian asked, the same time Adeline said, “The Needle?”
The Buaya looked smug, some assumption vindicated. “You are new around here, aren’t you? We need to be sure our girls are constantly in good health, and when women’s accidents happen, the problem needs to go away, quietly.”
Of all the clans deriving blood power from the gods, most were like Red Butterfly: their god flowing through the hot blood of a single conduit, whose power was then disseminated through oaths and tattoos, and who gathered members of need and loyalty.
But there were other unjealous and less territorial gods, who allowed their power to be cultivated through dedication to individual practice.
Their followers had developed their own forms of inheritance.
The Sons of Sago Lane, for example, had been led by the same Yang family for generations.
The Needles were a similarly neutral society of healers that barely constituted a society any longer—pupils were inducted into lineages by individual teachers, and they were governed by their human masters, their own principles, and their own bargains with the god.
Big kongsi like Three Steel kept a Needle on retainer.
Red Butterfly often went to a Needle called Ah Lang, but without any exclusive arrangement, the confidentiality of their injuries rested solely on the fact that he was afraid of Tian and Pek Mun.
“All the brothels pay a Needle,” Tian said. “That’s normal. But the dead bodies are not. They’re not going to the Sons?”
“No, unless they’re paying one off as well, but you know how uptight the Dead’s Uncle is about private dealings.
Anyway, twice now in the early morning, my girls saw Three Steel load a body into a cart in the back alley.
They mistook them for night soil workers, at first. We only saw the two; there could have been more. ”
“Their illnesses were being treated, if they saw the Needle,” Tian said slowly.
“And they would have called the Sons if they had nothing to hide,” Adeline finished.
“Angry johns?” Tian guessed. “Angry handler?”
“In all your wisdom, Ang Tian, do you think Three Steel would care to keep that a secret?”
They lapsed into silence, all of them thinking; the Buaya smoked and coughed. Slightly swayed by the wine, Adeline’s mind returned to her original question and settled there, spiraling in. “The Needle who visits them, do you know who it is?”
“Sure. He’s our man, too. Anggor Neo. He’s set up in People’s Park now.”
“I’ve heard of him.” Tian glanced over, noticing Adeline’s expression. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking he’s the only one who comes in and out who’s not Three Steel or dead. He’s seen exactly what’s inside. Why don’t we talk to him?”
Tian exhaled. “We would have to find some kind of leverage. The Sons and the Needles see everyone’s secrets; that means they have to be good at keeping them, or else no one would go to them. But it’s not impossible.”
The Buaya snorted. “Anggor Neo is spineless. Talented, discreet. But he will cave to whoever scares him more. There’s one thing I have on him that Three Steel doesn’t.
” The Buaya sat back in her chair, taking a long drag.
She clearly enjoyed her power. She had made herself a comfortable position in this world—as comfortable as could be, in this sort of life—which begged the question, then: If she liked what she had, why was she so willingly offering them this information?
When she had nothing to gain, and when Three Steel’s retribution was famously unforgiving?
It couldn’t be a matter of principle, or of mere dislike of whichever men she was paying money to.
These sorts of loyalties had to rest—and fall—on more than that.
“You know, there were white girls working this street once, before the British banned their women from the trade. Then when I was young, this whole stretch was Japanese houses and karayuki. Then those were ousted, too, and we Chinese took over. No matter who runs the country, no matter where the girls come from, the city will always need warm bodies that can be bought. We are the oldest religion in the world. We are a clan, too, in a way, and we grow. Not all of us get rid of our babies.”
The Butterflies waited. It was evident she was ruminating, perhaps at last toward the reason they were all sitting here.
“My son was a Crocodile, you know. He was hunted down last week.”
There it was. The man at Bugis Street. Suddenly Adeline understood. None of this was about Three Steel taking over. Not truly. Or not wholly, at least. Little slights, perhaps, yes, but this was the tipping point, simple as: they had butchered her son.
Chinatown swallowed all your secrets, but it would spit it out willingly to your enemy if the profit was sufficient—or the revenge ran deep enough.
“Stupid boy. You want to be a traitor, don’t go to the police.
This is how you do it, hm?” The Buaya waved through the smoke; it dappled the light on her face like scales, exposing the pits and bumps beneath her silken powder.
It made her look battle-scarred, and her hooded eyes were nearly orange in the lamplight as well.
Her lips curved. One of her incisors was false and had been replaced by something sharpened and unnaturally white next to her other yellowed teeth.
“Just sort this out before you choose your next conduit and Fan Ge comes for your head, too. I can’t help you then. What am I but a washed-up old whore?”
Tian picked up the wine bottle, refilled both their cups, and handed the Buaya hers. “What do you know about the Needle?”
The Buaya swilled the liquor in her mouth.
“He has two children with his wife,” she said finally.
“A daughter and a son. This is known. He also has a second daughter, from a working girl who took her own life. It devastated him. He pays now for his daughter’s lodging, discreetly.
He would do quite drastic things, I think, to keep her safe. ”
“We don’t go after children,” Tian said sharply.
“My dear, you are both children to me. Besides, I’m not telling you to hurt her. You know how threats work.”
“I know threats don’t work if you’re not willing to follow through with them.”
“Then you know how bluffs work. Do you want this information, or not?”
“Give it to us,” Adeline said, before Tian could debate it further. The mamasan was right; they didn’t actually need to hurt anyone, only give a convincing enough impression that they might. Tian paused, but didn’t counter her.
The Buaya’s eyes flicked between them. Then she rang her bell again. “Mui,” she called loudly. “Come in here.”