The subheading promiseda four-part series into the lonely world of Singapore’s lesbians.Words jumped out across the columns, likeprivate hellandscaredandemptyandashamedandsadandhaunted by her image.
“Everyone in this is miserable,” Adeline said, although then she was thinking about there being aneveryone, at all, and that there were real women out there, somewhere, behind these furtive anonymous stories.
“Oh.” Christina frowned. “I didn’t read that far. Well, I can’t really read it, anyway. But I was told about it, and you can. The samereporters published a big story with the ah guas a few months ago. They came to the bars and everything and talked to some of my friends. Without names, of course. It was a big thing.”
“I remember that.” Tian was looking at the illustrations and photographs, of the back of two women’s heads. She nudged Adeline. “Read it for me?”
Adeline had reached the other page, though, and different sorts of lines appeared there.I feel I am so much a better being for having loved her, the anonymous woman had written.She gives a new meaning to my life. It is a new beginning. “Maybe next time,” she said, trying to keep her cheeks from heating.
“I don’t know,” Christina said plaintively, folding the paper up and smoothing out the creases. “It’s nice to be written about. There were even pictures of people I knew, in the previous one. They blocked out the eyes, but I’ve never had pictures before.”
Christina had to go to Thieves’ Market—her gun smuggler had apparently been arrested, as the police ramped up their crackdown on firearms. That left Tian and Adeline to go meet Nine Horse near the Turf Club, an hour’s bus ride from town. Before they parted ways, however, Christina had grabbed them. “I think that house was where one of my friends was killed,” she said. “Her name was Lina. Three Steel’s bookkeeper really liked her. She went to see him one night, and she never came back. We found her body a few weeks later. You don’t get used to it, you know?”
Now Tian and Adeline were alone in the jungled west of the island, waiting for whenever Three-Legged Lee deigned to show up. They had offered to go to Lee’s box at the Turf Club to hear more about it, but the police were still keeping an eye on him. It wouldn’t do to have another gang show up in his court. He had to resort to roadside kidnappings and secret meetings instead.
In these last two days Adeline had acquired the problem of beingincredibly distracted whenever Tian was within sight. Sitting quietly on this secluded slope was almost out of the question, but Tian insisted too many people passed by—if by too many people she meant a singular lone birdwatcher. After being rebuffed several times, Adeline had taken to wandering the field instead, plucking tall grasses to shreds and following odd noises into the trees while Tian occasionally called at her to stop. Adeline would stop when Nine Horse finally arrived or when Tian let her kiss her; it was really an easy resolution.
On this loop back she was startled by a monkey staring at her from low branches. “Jesus.”
“Wrong god,” Tian said.
“I went to Catholic school.” Adeline watched the square-jawed macaque, and it watched her, blatantly unafraid. “Boo.” It didn’t look impressed.
“Are you trying to scare a monkey?”
“It’s just sitting there.”
Adeline lit a hand, and it finally scampered off. Tian didn’t look impressed, either. She shut her eyes and lay back on the grass. “Maybe that was the monkey god.”
“At least that would be more exciting.” It would almost certainly be. But then, finally, Adeline saw a blur moving toward them with Nine Horse’s famous speed. It skidded to a stop before them, materializing as a gangly young man with no visible tattoos.
Tian came alert and shook the grass off herself. “Nine Horse could learn some warnings. Why didn’t Three-Legged Lee come himself?”
“The boss is busy.”
Tian snorted. “Busy betting.”
In the golden era of the kongsi, the associations had lived out in the open. They had large halls dedicated to their society’s operations, full shrines to their god with tablets of deceased members laid out around them, full kitchens to prepare banquets. Over time,grandiose estates had turned into more discreet meeting places: rented houses that could be easily abandoned, appropriated coolie quarters, businesses that doubled as fronts, coffee shops where members would gather. In these times, the ability to hide, and to disband and reconvene at a whim, was worth more than the prestige of establishment. Most of the addresses Mr. Chew had listed were places like that—discreet, bland, even somewhat run-down.
This Three Steel house, however, was a proper building with its own courtyard and gates, nestled amidst quarries and old warzones. Beneath them rose the hill that was the tallest point on the island. Not far from here was the big Beauty World marketplace, where several small gangs held gambling dens and loan shark outfits, across from a few rows of shophouses where another comfort station had been situated. But the area around the hill itself was still relatively quiet save the quarrying, which had only picked up, gouging deeper yellow granite gashes into the green slopes. Recently there had been some promises made to reduce exports, because the city increasingly needed the stone for itself.
It was the description of the quarries that had helped Adeline make the connection between this area and the kidnapping of Genevieve’s husband. Tian had heard of the fall of the Blackhills, but not of Red Butterfly’s role in it. The Nine Horse envoy was similarly too young to know anything about it. His leader, however, had seen the fallout in person—how the vacuum left behind by the Blackhills’ departure had been filled by small and large players alike, including Three Steel and Nine Horse.
“The house used to be owned by the Blackhill Brothers,” the Nine Horse envoy confirmed now. “The police raided them and took back the land. It was bought over ten years ago—we assume through a proxy. There have been parties there before—girls brought in, and everything. Their bookkeeper comes and goes, as does Fan Ge and his mistress, and some of his higher lieutenants, and the usual Needle. His tattooist as well.”
Not anymore, but it remained to be seen how long Fan Ge would take to figure that out. “We were told he’s hiding something here,” Adeline said.
“Not the mistress, that’s for sure. He goes around openly with her, around here. Don’t know her name, but she’s beautiful. Probably he favors her because she gave him a son,” the envoy added.
“You know how often Three Steel gathers here?”
“Almost every day, at least the important kakis. They have a box at the Turf Club.”
“Well-guarded?” Tian asked.
“Like hell. The guys at the gates have guns, and they’re almost as steeled as Fan Ge is.”
“Any way to get close?”
