Chapter Twenty-Four. the Hangar and the Summit
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE HANGAR AND THE SUMMIT
The Summit was a dressy place, Christina said.
Do with that what you will. Adeline was thus trying to curl her fine hair, without avail and to her endless frustration.
She didn’t know why she kept trying, knowing her hair couldn’t hold a curl.
But they were going so far away, to a hotel where people got up to secrets and where the only man to be worried about would be shortly dead, and so she thought that tonight of all nights would be the one to make curls happen.
Unhelpfully, she was still thinking of the conversation earlier that day. She had seen Genevieve that morning for the first time since she ran off. She’d only gone to Jenny’s for clothes, but Genevieve had invited her out for lunch.
They’d sat at some expensive French café, surrounded by expat wives and tai tais chatting breezily about their children’s preschools, their husbands’ cricket games, the latest fashions and bakeries.
Adeline had felt separated from them with an intensity over and above her usual.
It was the sudden and final understanding that this was not a life she would ever be capable of aspiring to.
It was liberation, in part, and also grief, and something thornier she didn’t have words for yet.
“There’s still the money for you, when you want to use it,” Genevieve said. “And the offer to find you a place is always open.”
Genevieve was keeping some of her mother’s funds funneled to Red Butterfly. The rest was held in a trust. Adeline didn’t even know what she’d do with the money. Everything she wanted money couldn’t buy. “Did you know Chew Luen Fah is in bed with Three Steel?” she asked instead.
“It’s an open secret; the Chews always have been. Your mother was worried when you became friends with his daughter. You’re not in trouble with Three Steel, are you?”
Genevieve Hwang, her mother’s confidante.
For the first time Adeline had felt only disparagement—did Genevieve think Adeline would tell her everything, too?
So Adeline had lied and said there was nothing going on.
Trouble tonight seemed like the wrong word, at least. Christina and Tian didn’t seem daunted.
The tattooist was going to be unguarded and easy to find.
Adeline had the sense of going to a party, and was dressing like it.
Now the sound of a car pulling up told her she was out of time. Her hair would have to do, left long and mostly straight over her bare shoulders.
Christina was downstairs in a sleeveless green cheongsam, on the sofa next to Tian, who was merely wearing a nicer shirt.
They both looked up when Adeline came down the stairs.
Perhaps the red jumpsuit was a bit much.
It was meant for discos, not assassination attempts, but Adeline had loved it on the mannequin and it did make her feel like she could kill someone—the halter neck, the open cleavage, the way the top half clung to her like skin.
If all went to plan the Steel tattooist would never see her, anyway.
It was worth it for the way Tian was staring.
“Is that the car?” she asked.
Christina looked between Tian and Adeline, and sighed. “Yes, that’s Charles. Leave me the front seat!” she shouted.
There was a thump and quiet arguing as Adeline headed along to the battered Toyota parked outside, where Charles Pereira, their volunteer driver for the night, was smoking out the window. He peered at her as she approached.
“Christina?”
“Coming.”
Charles was some kind of Eurasian and pretty, with the kind of full lips and slender jaw even a girl could envy. He had permed hair over his ears and a hippie mustache, sat in his driver’s seat in well-worn bell-bottoms. “What’s your name then?”
“Adeline.”
“Who you trying to kill, in that getup?” Charles grinned. “You like any particular radio station?”
“Not really.”
He clicked through a box of cassettes. “Elvis girl?”
“No.”
“Well, don’t sound so excited.” He didn’t seem offended, and Adeline decided she liked him. “You really going to off Iron Eye?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Yeah, I know. You ever done it before?”
“Have you?”
“That’s what we’ve got you all for, isn’t it? Siao zha bor.”
Tian and Christina finally emerged. “Are you just going to stand there?” Tian said, since Adeline was still in front of the door.
“I’m making friends.” At this, Christina sighed again.
They got in the car, everyone feeling like they were regretting it.
There was little choice, though, with a plan they couldn’t share and nothing else to do.
Mavis and Hwee Min had found Three Steel’s private house in Bukit Timah heavily guarded, but had a possible solution.
Three-Legged Lee held a significant stake at the racecourse nearby.
Tens of thousands of people packed into the grandstands every weekend; Nine Horse historically controlled stables and vets and shops in the area, and were most likely to be aware of rival ongoings.
Mavis and Hwee Min had wondered, over the phone, if Nine Horse might be willing to tip them off, since Three-Legged Lee had proved helpful to Adeline before.
They’d sent a message and were waiting to hear back. Meanwhile, they and a couple of other girls Tian trusted were scouting out some of the other addresses.
Charles eyed Tian and Adeline in the mirror. “Ah,” he said, almost laughing.
Christina elbowed him. “Drive, Pereira.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He dropped his cigarette onto the street. The car started off with a lurch.
“Your car is in shambles.”
“If it’s in such shambles, why don’t you drive yourself?” He grinned as Christina rolled her eyes, knowing good and well she didn’t have a car, and that this trip they didn’t even trust the pirate taxis to keep in confidence.
Secluded in the east and known for discretion, the Summit Hotel often rented out some of its former colonial bungalows to private hosts, and thus saw all sorts of groups.
The owner of the hotel bar was an entrepreneurial man willing to cash in on an underserved market: while men dancing together was banned at all the venues in town, the Hangar shrugged and winked on Thursdays and every other Sunday, and had thus become a place where foreigners met local boys, and slightly more affluent local men met each other, and—crucially—where a particular few kongsi members were known, in the right circles, to frequent.
Charles Pereira was their in. He owed Christina something, although they were also friends.
He had tipped them off, and now he had agreed to help them lure out the man known as Iron Eye: Three Steel’s primary tattooist, a former rival thug who’d allegedly lost his eye to Fan Ge himself, upon which he decided to switch loyalties and become a tattooist instead, replacing his missing eye with a metal prosthetic.
He was a low-profile and comfortably well-off man, like most of Three Steel’s higher-ups.
He was rarely found outside Three Steel–controlled areas, and was so stringent with his teachings that he had yet to find an apprentice who satisfied him.
By all accounts, he was careful and rigorous, necessary qualities to work with the unique properties of Three Steel tattoos. But he had this singular indulgence.
Whether his boss knew about his routine was unclear.
Anyone who worked the Hangar certainly knew, as well as the maids and bellboys who staffed the hotel, where he had a regular room.
It only took one person who understood what those white tattoos meant, and another who knew someone who could make use of the information, and now the Butterflies were winding out of town to kill a man.
“He’s a good tipper,” Charles was saying.
“We’ll pay you, Pereira.”
“Buys wine.”
“Keep your eyes on the road.”
“I just think if I’m going to be an accomplice—motherfucker!” The car screeched to a stop at a red light, jerking Adeline out of her seat where she’d been fiddling with the radio. Tian hauled her back before she could smash into the dashboard.
“Charles!” Christina yelled.
He threw up his hands. “Put on your seat belt!”
“Put your hands back on the wheel!”
Tian muttered something unpleasant. Adeline returned to her own end of the car, primly clipping the seat belt into place. Christina pinched the bridge of her nose. “I am never asking you for a lift again.”
“Darling, you knew what you were getting into.” They lurched off again. Workers in neon vests waved them down a road diversion. With his free hand, Charles rummaged in his glove compartment and dumped a handful of cassettes into Christina’s lap. “Pick something good.”
Christina popped one into the player and an electric guitar filled the car.
Charles rolled the windows down and turned the volume up as the psych blues of some local band took them coasting down a new-looking road.
Even ground and sea could shift without one’s notice these days, skylines changing and land appearing where there had once been only open water.
The city melted into trees, buildings turning squatter and sparser.
They drove up a gentle hill and parked in a well-appointed lot, where Charles’s beat-up vehicle looked sorry amongst the shining Jaguars and Cadillacs.
Quiet places drew quiet wealth, men with secrets and the resources to hide them.
It was a cool night. There were crickets somewhere in the manicured trees, and a low-gliding bat arced past them with a faint chitter.
Across the lawn sat the cluster of black-and-white houses that the hotel had consolidated, each two stories, white pillars with dark trims and slatted windows, red gables and veranda arches through which light spilled.
Charles dropped them off in the garden by a pond with instructions to wait there, as they would stand out too much inside. Christina handed him a small pouch. “Life of crime,” Charles sighed, but pocketed the sleeping pills and headed inside.