“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 hadmade 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 bysomething 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.”
CHAPTER TWELVEUNJEALOUS GODS
Adeline woke to the pounding realization that she’d completely passed out. It was past ten o’clock, the room baking with a sun that had been ruminating for a few hours now. She rolled over and found the envelope on the bedside stool, protruded by the roll of negatives inside it. Last night came back to her: the photo shop, the pictures developed from the Buaya’s camera, supper and then mahjong with the girls and shoddy rice wine. Alotof wine, and then—well. She was still in her clothes. She had no memory of even getting back to bed.
Resentfully, Adeline took the envelope and dragged herself through getting dressed, passing Mavis and Geok Ning, who were hunched over a box in Mavis’s room. “Tian has food!” Mavis called, as Adeline passed. Ning snickered. “She felt bad.”
Tian. Right. They were supposed to go find the Needle today. Adeline entertained the idea that they would both be in equally bad shapes, and hence would decide to call it all off and stay the day in. But downstairs she found that Tian had in fact not just acquired a meal, but made it: the kitchen was in disarray, having produced the spread of watery Teochew porridge and dishes that Pek Mun was idly eating from, absorbed in a vaguely familiar book about some girls in an English boarding school.
Tian—deeply apologetic, unfairly sober, and smelling like spices—insisted Adeline eat before they went anywhere. “Sometimes,” she said, when Adeline asked how often this cooking thing appeared.
Pek Mun rolled her eyes. “You haven’t cooked in months.” She clamped her book under her arm and swept up her crockery. “I’ll do your dishes before you leave them all day. You’re going out again, I’m sure.”
“I like going out, Mun.”
Pek Mun rolled her eyes again. Adeline ate and felt much better for it. Vera and Mavis joined her for second helpings, and Hwee Min wrapped her arms around Tian’s neck, asking her to please cook more often, and then there was an argument over the last fishcake until Tian sighed, tore it in two, and turned to Adeline. “Got it?”
Adeline held up the envelope. “Let’s go.”
Even in the day, a persistent presence ran through Chinatown’s patchwork of gods and devotees, the tenacious hum of squatters whose mottled magic still made up the grout. The silver roofs and twisting dragons of Thian Hock Keng Temple and its sea goddess ran along sweetly smoking ghost month offerings toward the colorful, intricate Dravidian tiers of Sri Mariamman, and then again after a turn into the pastel green minarets of Masjid Jamae. Tian had stories about almost everywhere: On the same corner where a streetwalker had been robbed and shot, a cobbler worked such wonders with leather the girls weren’t convinced it wasn’t magic. Outside the bar where a hostess had been raped was the alleged best curry laksa in the city. There was a little field where just a few months ago two kongsi had fought, resulting in a man with his head split open (allegedly you could still find pieces in the grass), but also where, if you came at the right season, there was a copse of wild durian trees the neighbors would fight over.
And for the longest time, for the early part of Tian’s teenage memory, the foot of Pearl’s Hill had been a raw construction site, the unrestful grave of a marketplace that had been decimated by a Christmas Eve fire. Then two years ago the scaffolding had come down, revealing a gray six-story shopping center—the largest in the city, the first of its architectural kind in the region. And the newlychristened People’s Park wasn’t even done. Its head was still being built upward—eventually it was supposed to rise thirty floors out of Chinatown.
