Chapter Twenty-Nine. On the Market for Thieves #2
He narrowed his eyes. He was leery about getting in too thick with kongsi business, despite laundering for some of them on occasion; he dealt in theft, not murder and vices, and certainly not blood and gods.
His business had even been flourishing in the absence of White Bone, whose much higher profile exploits had started tightening the noose on burglaries all across the country.
“I certainly don’t want your heat tonight,” he said.
Christina missed, and he turned his attention to the green. “Bring them over here.”
Tian bristled, but she motioned for the five girls to come closer. Raja Guni glanced at them, clearly intending to be dismissive, then did a double take and set down his cue. He peered at them one at a time, growing more conflicted with each girl. “Did you do something to them?”
“What do you mean?” Tian said blandly.
“Look at them. Actually, try not to look at them. Can barely do it. It’s like my eyes keep going back.
” He swallowed and stepped away, flicking a hand.
“Can’t take them. Whatever they’re spelled with, they’d be the worst thieves.
Just sell them off to one of your pimps.
Wouldn’t that be quicker than coming here? ”
“No, please, I don’t want that.” Pilar, who’d clearly been following the whole conversation, grabbed Tian’s arm. “We’ll swear to you, then. You’re a gang? You take girls? Take us.”
Tian stared at her, and Adeline could tell she was considering it.
In the time since Tian had become Madam Butterfly, they hadn’t had a chance to recruit anyone, mostly because they’d been too busy making sure they would still have a Madam Butterfly.
They could use more girls, if Three Steel wouldn’t be a threat.
Of course there was no guarantee they would be suited for the fire, although Pilar’s determination was promising.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Raja Guni remarked. “Not good security.”
The tone of his voice was too knowing. Had been too knowing all night. Adeline turned to him. “Something you want to say?”
He looked surprised. “Police radio started chattering a couple hours ago. Something about a kidnapping, something about raiding a house on Jiak Chuan Road … Isn’t that where you girls are?
I think they’re up to … thirteen arrests?
” Christina made a strangled noise. “Well, that was maybe half an hour ago.” He scrutinized the table and squinted up his shot, only for Tian to grab his cue.
“You didn’t think to mention this earlier?” she said, pale, voice low and explicitly dangerous. She shook Pilar off, and the girl took several wary steps back.
“Hey.” Raja Guni apparently saw he might have made a mistake. He tugged back on the stick, but Tian wasn’t letting go. “I said I didn’t want to catch your heat tonight.”
“Adeline,” Tian said. “Find a phone. Call everywhere.”
“Hey,” Raja Guni interjected, nervously now. “Hey. You can take the police radio, hear what they’re saying.”
“Christina, did you manage to reload?”
Christina sighed and reached for her hip. “Yeah.”
“I’ll take the radio,” Tian agreed, before picking up Christina’s cue instead and swinging it into Raja Guni’s head.
As the fight exploded, Adeline ran. On the way out she grabbed the remaining bouncer, spiking him with a fever before he could draw his club.
She found a phone booth on the corner of the market and picked her way toward it, rummaging in her pockets for coins.
A raid. Arrests. All the Butterflies had been at the house drinking tonight.
For all the shiny things she’d been eyeing in the market earlier, she should have gone for ten-cents instead.
She ran out of coins after calls to the house, then to the White Orchid, Ah Seng’s, the Peony, Hoon’s Eating House, Fatt Loy’s, the Golden Lady, and the Swallow.
Nothing, nothing, and nothing, they said they would keep an eye out, pass the message along, but none of them had seen any Butterflies.
Someone had called the police. Who? Not Three Steel; Fan Ge would never bring in the police.
But who else was there? Who else cared? They had fallen into a pit in a road they hadn’t even known they were walking.
Most of her couldn’t fully comprehend the implications.
Thirteen arrests, maybe more—who was gone?
Hwee Min? Vera? Ji Yen? Had anyone made it out?
They’d been on guard for a move from Three Steel—they had never even considered the police.
That wasn’t the way things were supposed to work.
Not an hour ago they’d been discussing what they would do when they returned home, what they’d do after the hostages were released and the deals honored.
Now—and it was starting to hit Adeline, the full slate of what this meant—now there would be no home to return to.
Not only that, but they had nowhere to go.
She went back to find that Tian had set fires anyway.
The snooker table was alight and Raja Guni and all his lackeys were gone, except the one lying on the floor with a bloody mouth and a broken cue stick next to him.
The Pulau Saigon girls had apparently fled—so much for wanting to swear oaths.
All the while the turntable had escaped unscathed.
The saxophone was still playing, interspersed by crackling.
Tian was sitting alone on the floor with the source of the noise, an industrial gadget that must have been the police radio. It was bashed in on one side, but stray words made it through the static. Downtown units—code 6—please dispatch.
Tian twisted the antenna. “We heard over the radio,” she said, as Adeline came up.
It might have been the flames, but her dark eyes flickered gold.
“It was the mistress. They rescued her and she gave her name—it’s fucking Seetoh.
Seetoh Su Han.” When Adeline didn’t react, she gave a short laugh.
“The Seetoh men ran the Blackhill clan for years, until your mother tipped off the police. This has nothing to do with Three Steel. This is an old, old grudge. She’s gotten everyone who was in the house for holding her hostage. ”
Tian kicked the radio, and it went spinning across the floor, where it hit a table leg with a clang. When she finally looked up at Adeline, Adeline felt history turn and turn, bite back on itself. “They could hang them for kidnapping,” Tian said. “What the fuck have I done?”
Adeline didn’t know how to respond. She was dizzy, couldn’t breathe.
Surely they were meant to see things coming; surely they could not keep being upended with no warning.
Fifteen years ago, some men had kidnapped another man and his wife had reached out to an old friend, and then that woman had died of her own hubris and now Adeline was paying her debts.
Now Adeline wanted to hunt this mistress down and make another orphan out of her son, foist off this despair onto whatever soul was stupid and unlucky enough to stumble into it in another five, ten, fifteen years, when that boy was old enough to be an enemy.
And yet still none of that would free their friends.
“Guys.” Christina emerged from the back, a phone cradled to her chest. “Mavis has some of the girls at Ah Lang’s.”
Adeline didn’t know that she could hear anything else, but she wanted to hear Mavis’s voice and she wanted to know who else had made it.
She felt unstable even taking steps, as if the ground were liable to shift, too, but she and Tian pulled themselves together enough to gather around the telephone. “It’s us,” Tian said hoarsely.
Mavis’s voice crackled through wet and thin. “Tian, we’re getting some of the girls here. Ah Lang’s not very happy, but we didn’t know what else to do.”
“You’re doing fine, Mavis. Tell me what the fuck is going on. We heard about the raid.”
“Hwee Min should tell you—here—”
“Tian?” came Hwee Min’s higher voice. “It happened so fast. We heard the cars outside and we realized it was the police and then everyone was running.”
“How many of you are there?”
“There’s three of us plus Mavis and Jade here. I think a few more got away. But they caught a lot of them.”
“Her father and brothers were Blackhill,” Tian told the others. “Red Butterfly information had them executed. She must have been planning this the moment we broke into Fan Ge’s house. She must have been playing scared the whole time. But how she got the police—I don’t know.”
“Blackhill? Are you sure?”
Tian raked her hand through her hair. “Yeah, Min, I’m fucking sure.”
Muffled voices, then Hwee Min returning hesitantly.
“This might sound crazy. But I thought I heard you on the telephone tonight. When I went to look, it was Vera standing there. I said she was supposed to be guarding the woman, and she said no one was coming, and we could take a break guarding for a while. She wanted a drink. She came and joined us for a while before going back upstairs. I don’t know—now, I think maybe—maybe she was the one that called them. ”
“Why would she do that?” Christina started, but Ji Yen cut in.
“Vera was off the whole time she was drinking. She didn’t talk at all. Hwee Min might be right.”
“She wasn’t there when the police showed up,” Hwee Min said slowly. “She left early.”
“Vera hates the police,” Mavis said vehemently. “She wouldn’t do this. Tian—you know her. She wouldn’t do this.”
“Then someone give me a damn good second explanation,” Tian said quietly. “Because I know where her favorite aunt lives, and apparently I don’t have anywhere else to go tonight.”
“Tian,” Christina murmured in alarm. Tian waved her off, letting the silence mount. Mavis started and stopped a few sentences, defenses sputtering out each time. In the background, Jade was faintly audible. It doesn’t make sense, she kept arguing. It doesn’t make sense.
“If Vera was working with Su Han and Three Steel, why wouldn’t she just let her out?” Adeline said. “Why stage a whole raid?”
Before anyone could muster a response, however, there was a shuffling on the other end. Noises of alarm—Mavis shouting, “Stay there!” and then Vera shouting, “I can explain!”
“Put her on,” Tian said. “And don’t let her go anywhere.”
Vera came to the phone almost rambling. “Tian—it wasn’t me—I only just got away, I had to climb out the damn window. The mistress fucking attacked me.”
“Vera, what are you wearing?” Mavis said.
“Her clothes!” Vera spat. “She hit me in the head and took my clothes. Shrinking, and everything—”
“You’re not making sense,” Tian snapped, but even as she said it, she went entirely still.
“She’s a shape-shifter, Tian. She’s fucking White Bone.
I went in because the kid sounded really sick, she sounded really scared—then she hit me and changed into me.
I saw her tattoos appear when she did it.
By the time I woke up the police were downstairs.
She was sitting there waiting for them to find her and the kid, telling me how we deserved this.
I’m pretty sure she cut up her own arms to make it look like we beat her. I didn’t stick around to look closely.”
“Fuck.” Tian covered the mouthpiece, as though not trusting herself to be heard. Her other fingers clicked, sparking out furiously. “Fuck.”
“That’s where they’ve been getting all the blood,” Adeline said, thoughts racing ahead of her emotions, which had not yet consolidated themselves. “White Bone has women in it?”
“Apparently. And apparently one of them is the Blackhill daughter and she’s out for us.”
The girls on the other end had heard this last part. “It’s just one woman,” Jade said hesitantly.
“One woman without rules or honor or profit,” Tian said.
She had been furious a second before; now something like exhaustion was creeping through.
“She wasn’t in a rush. She made that telephone call and then she sat down for fucking drinks.
If she wanted to she could have pretended to be me, walked right out of the house with the kid and none of you would have stopped her.
But she wanted us caught by the police. I managed to make a deal with Fan Ge because chasing Red Butterfly would destroy us both—this woman cared more about her exact revenge than her own freedom.
She’s not bound by anything. And she’s done this much damage already. ”
“But we’re not going to let her do this, are we?” Hwee Min said. It sounded incredibly childish, asking for reassurance. “We can’t just let her do this.”
“No. I want her.” Tian pressed the phone against her temples. Adeline wasn’t sure if the other end could even hear her, or if what Tian said next was only intended for her and Christina. “I just don’t know how to find her. I don’t think she’s planning to be found a second time.”