The Windup Girl (14 page)

"You know Dog Fucker?"

Laughing Chan nods sharply and his smile disappears. "And Sukrit knows me. I will be below the seawall, village side. Out of sight. I have Ah Ping and Peter Siew to watch close."

"Good then." Hock Seng finishes his
jok
and pays for Laughing Chan's food as well. With Laughing Chan and his men nearby, Hock Seng feels a little better. But still, it is a risk. If this thing goes wrong Laughing Chan will be too far away to do much more than effect vengeance. And really, when Hock Seng thinks about it, he isn't sure he has paid enough for that.

Laughing Chan saunters off, slipping between tarp structures. Hock Seng continues on through the stagnant heat to the steep, rough path that runs up the side of the seawall. He climbs up through the slums, his knee aching with every step. Eventually, he reaches the high broad embankment of the city's tidal defenses.

After the sheltered stink of the slums, the sea breeze rushing over him and tugging at his clothes is a relief. The bright blue ocean reflects like a mirror. Others stand on the embankment's promenade, taking the fresh air. In the distance one of King Rama XII's coal pumps squats like a massive toad on the embankment's edge. The symbol for Korakot, the crab, is visible in its metal hide. Steam and smoke gout from its stacks in steady puffs.

Somewhere, deep underground, organized by the genius of the King, the pumps send their tendrils and suck water from beneath so that the city will not drown. Even in the hot season, seven pumps run steadily, keeping Bangkok from being swallowed. In the rainy season, all twelve of the zodiac signs run as the rain drenches down and everyone poles the thoroughfares of the city in skiffs, skin soaked, grateful that the monsoon hasn't failed and that the seawalls haven't broken.

He makes his way down the other side and out on a dock. A farmer with a skiff full of coconuts offers him one, slashing open the green top for Hock Seng to drink. Across the waters the drowned buildings of Thonburi poke up through the waves. Skiffs and fishing nets and clipper ships slip back and forth in the water. Hock Seng takes a deep breath, sucking the smell of salt and fish and seaweed deep into his lungs. The life of the ocean.

A Japanese clipper slides past, palm-oil polymer hull and high white sails like a gull's. The hydrofoil package below it is still hidden, but once it's out in the water, it will use its spring cannon to launch its high sails, and then the ship will leap up from the water like a fish.

Hock Seng remembers standing on the deck of his own first clipper, its high sails flying, slashing across the ocean like a stone skipped by a child, laughing as they tore over the waves, as spray rushed and blasted him. He had turned to his number one wife and told her that all things were possible, that the future was theirs.

He settles himself on the shoreline and drinks the rest of the green coconut water while a beggar boy watches. Hock Seng beckons. This one is smart enough, he supposes. He likes to reward the smart ones, the ones who are patient enough to linger and see what he will do with a coconut husk. He hands it to the boy. The boy takes it with a
wai
and goes to smash it on the mortared stones at the top of the seawall. Then he squats and uses a scrap of oyster shell to scrape the slimy tender meat from the interior, starving.

Eventually, Dog Fucker arrives. His real name is Sukrit Kamsing, but Hock Seng seldom hears the man's true name on the lips of yellow cards. There is too much bile and history built up. Instead, it's always Dog Fucker, and the words drip with hate and fear. He's a squat man, full of calories and muscle. As perfect for his work as a megodont is for converting calories into joules. The scars on his hands and arms show pale. The slits where his nose once stood stare at Hock Seng, two dark vertical nostril slashes that give him a porcine appearance.

There is some argument among yellow cards about whether Dog Fucker let
fa' gan
run too long, allowing its cauliflower growths to send enough tendrils deep into his flesh that doctors were forced to chop the whole thing off to save his life, or if the Dung Lord simply took his nose to teach him a lesson.

Dog Fucker squats beside Hock Seng. Hard black eyes. "Your Doctor Chan came to me. With a letter."

Hock Seng nods. "I want to meet with your patron."

Dog Fucker laughs slightly. "I broke her fingers and fucked her dead for interrupting my nap."

Hock Seng keeps his face impassive. Maybe Dog Fucker is lying. Maybe he is telling the truth. It is impossible to know. Regardless, it is a tease. To see if Hock Seng will flinch. To see if he will bargain. Perhaps Doctor Chan is gone. Another name to weigh him down when he finally reincarnates. Hock Seng says, "Your patron will look favorably on the offer, I think."

Dog Fucker scratches absently at the slit of a nostril. "Why not meet me at my office, instead?"

"I like open places."

"You have people around here? More yellow cards? You think they'll make you safe?"

Hock Seng shrugs. He looks out at the ships and their sails. At the wide world beckoning. "I want to offer you and your patron a deal. A mountain of profit."

"Tell me what it is."

Hock Seng shakes his head. "No. I must speak with him in person. Him only."

"He doesn't talk to yellow cards. Maybe I'll just feed you to the red-fin
plaa
out there. Just like the Green Headbands did with your kind down south."

"You know who I am."

"I know who your letter says you were." Dog Fucker rubs at the edges of his nose slits, studying Hock Seng. "Here, you're just another yellow card."

Hock Seng doesn't say anything. He hands the hemp sack of money across to Dog Fucker. Dog Fucker eyes it suspiciously, doesn't take it. "What is it?"

"A gift. Look and see."

Dog Fucker is curious. But also cautious. It's a good thing to know. He isn't the sort to put his hand in a bag and come up with a scorpion. Instead, he loosens the sack and dumps it. Bundles of cash spill out, roll in the shells and dirt of low tide. Dog Fucker's eyes widen. Hock Seng keeps himself from smiling.

"Tell the Dung Lord that Tan Hock Seng, head of the Three Prosperities Trading Company has a business proposal. Deliver my note to him and you will also profit greatly."

Dog Fucker smiles. "I think perhaps that I'll simply take this money, and my men will beat you until you tell me where you hide all your paranoid yellow card cash."

Hock Seng doesn't say anything. Keeps his face impassive.

Dog Fucker says, "I know all about Laughing Chan's people here. He owes me for his disrespect."

Hock Seng is surprised that he feels no fear. He lives in fear of all things, but thuggish
pi lien
like Dog Fucker are not what fill his nights with terror. In the end, Dog Fucker is a businessman. He is not a white shirt, puffed on national pride or hungry for a little more respect. Dog Fucker works for money. Acts for money. He and Hock Seng are different parts of the economic organism, but underneath everything, they are brothers. Hock Seng smiles slightly as confidence builds.

"This is just a gift, for your trouble. What I propose will provide much more. For all of us." He takes out the last two items. One, a letter. "Give it to your master, sealed." The other, he hands across: a small box with its familiar universal spindle and braces, a palm-oil polymer casing in a dull shade of yellow.

Dog Fucker takes the object, turns it over. "A kink-spring?" He makes a face. "What's the point of this?"

Hock Seng smiles. "He'll know when he reads the letter." He stands and turns away, without even waiting for Dog Fucker to respond, feeling stronger and more assured than any time since the Green Headbands came and his warehouses went up in smoke and his clipper ships went sliding down into the ocean depths. In this moment, Hock Seng feels like a man. He walks straighter, his limp forgotten.

It's impossible to know if Dog Fucker's people will follow him and so he walks slowly, knowing that both Dog Fucker's and Laughing Chan's men surround him, a floating ring of surveillance as he works his way down the alleys and cuts into deeper slums, until, at last, Laughing Chan is there, waiting for him, smiling.

"They let you go," he says.

Hock Seng pulls out more money. "You did well. He knows it was your men, though." He gives Laughing Chan an extra roll of baht. "Pay him off with this."

Laughing Chan smiles at the pile of money. "This is twice what I need for that. Even Dog Fucker likes to use us when he doesn't want to risk smuggling SoyPRO over from Koh Angrit."

"Take it anyway."

Laughing Chan shrugs and pockets it. "It's very kind of you. With the anchor pads shut down, we can use the extra baht."

Hock Seng is turning away, but at Laughing Chan's words he turns back.

"What did you say about the anchor pads?"

"They're shut down. The white shirts raided them last night. Everything's locked tight."

"What happened?"

Laughing Chan shrugs. "I heard they burned everything. Sent it all up in smoke."

Hock Seng doesn't pause to ask any more. He turns and runs, as fast as his old bones will carry him. Cursing himself all the way. Cursing that he was a fool and didn't put his nose to the wind, that he let himself be distracted from bare survival by the urgent wish to do something more, to reach ahead.

Every time he makes plans for his future, he seems to fail. Every time he reaches forward, the world leans against him, pressing him down.

On Thanon Sukhumvit, in the sweat of the sun, he finds a news vendor. He fumbles through newspapers and the hand-cranked whisper sheets of rumor, through luck pages advertising good numbers for gambling and the names of predicted
muay thai
champions.

He tears them open, one after another, more frantic with every copy.

All of them show the smiling face of Jaidee Rojjanasukchai, the incorruptible Tiger of Bangkok.

7

"Look! I'm famous!"

Jaidee holds the whisper sheet picture up beside his own face, grinning at Kanya. When she doesn't smile, he puts it back in its rack, along with all the rest of his pictures.

"Eh, you're right. It's not really a good likeness. They must have bribed it out of our records department." He sighs wistfully. "But I was young then."

Still, Kanya doesn't respond, just stares morosely at the water of the
khlong
. They've spent the day hunting for skiffs smuggling PurCal and AgriGen crops up the river, sailing back and forth across the river mouth, and Jaidee still thrums with a certain exhilaration.

The prize of the day was a clipper ship anchored just off the docks. Ostensibly an Indian trading vessel sailed north from Bali, it turned out to be brimming with cibiscosis-resistant pineapples. It was satisfying to see the harbormaster and the ship's captain both stammering excuses while Jaidee's white shirts poured lye over the entire shipment, crate after crate rendered sterile and inedible. All that smuggling profit gone.

He flips though the other papers attached to the display board, finds a different image of himself. This one from his time as a
muay thai
competitor, laughing after a fight in Lumphini Stadium.
The Bangkok Morning Post.

"My boys will like this one."

He opens the paper and scans the story. Trade Minister Akkarat is spitting mad. The quotes from the Trade Ministry call Jaidee a vandal. Jaidee is surprised they don't just call him a traitor or a terrorist. That they restrain themselves tells him just how impotent they really are.

Jaidee can't help smiling over the pages at Kanya. "We really hurt them."

Again, Kanya doesn't respond.

There's a certain trick to ignoring her bad moods. The first time Jaidee met Kanya, he almost thought she was stupid, the way her face remained so impassive, so impervious to any hint of fun, as though she were missing an organ, a nose for smell, eyes for sight, and whatever curious organ makes a person sense
sanuk
when it is right in front of them.

"We should be getting back to the Ministry," she says, and turns to scan the boat traffic along the
khlong
, looking for a possible ride.

Jaidee pays the whisper sheet man for his paper as a canal taxi glides into view.

Kanya flags it and it slides up beside them, its flywheel whining with accumulated power, waves sloshing the
khlong
embankment as its wake catches up. Huge kink-springs crowd half its displacement. Wealthy Chaozhou Chinese business people cram the covered prow of the boat like ducks on their way to slaughter.

Kanya and Jaidee jump aboard and stand on the running board outside the seating compartment. The ticket child ignores their white uniforms, just as they ignore her. She sells a 30-baht ticket to another man who boards with them. Jaidee grabs a safety line as the boat accelerates away from the dock. Wind caresses his face as they make their way down the
khlong,
aiming for the heart of the city. The boat moves quickly, zipping around small paddled skiffs and long tail boats in the canal. Blocks of dilapidated houses and shopfronts slide past,
pha sin
and blouses and sarong hang colorful in the sun. Women bathe their long black hair in the brown waters of the canal. The boat slows abruptly.

Kanya looks forward. "What is it?"

Up ahead, a tree has fallen, blocking much of the canal. Boats jam around it, trying to squeeze past.

"A
bo
tree," Jaidee says. He looks around for landmarks. "We'll have to let the monks know."

No one else will move it. And despite the shortage of wood, no one will harvest it either. It would be unlucky. Their boat wallows as the
khlong
traffic tries to slip through the tiny gap left in the canal, where the sacred tree has not blocked movement.

Jaidee makes a noise of impatience and then calls ahead. "Clear out, friends! Ministry business. Clear the way!" He waves his badge.

The sight of the badge and his bright white uniform is enough to get boats and skiffs poling aside. The pilot of their taxi flashes Jaidee a grateful look. Their kink-spring craft slips into the press, jostling for space.