“I do,” Christina said, obviously looking to humor him. Where she’d learned they couldn’t know—her father again, perhaps, apparentmember of such gentlemen’s clubs—but she took up the abandoned cue with familiarity.
“We’re hoping you’ll take these girls,” Tian said to the Raja, as Christina lined up a shot.
“Didn’t anyone tell you not to start a conversation with business?” He grunted as a ball sank into the pocket. “Where are they from, anyway?”
“That’s not the kind of question I answer in Thieves’ Market.”
“Ha. You do when I’m asking it.”
“You don’t want the answer.”
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 consideringit. 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 fuckingSeetoh. 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?”
