“It’s very good coffee,” he said, returning the cap.
“I can teach you how to make them, for free.” Amal grinned. “Tea also, especially tea; they all in my blood lah. I from Ceylon. You know Ceylon?”
“Heard of it.”
“So how?” Amal’s head waggled slightly. “Join me lah, we make money together.”
When Anton nodded he almost gagged from a slap to his back. A delighted Amal then snatched up his finger and pricked it with an object that glinted in the sunlight. It vanished as quickly as it appeared. Before he could even flinch Amal was already clutching his hand in a fist and hefting it up to their noses in a display of unity.
“Now we business blood-brothers,” said he, flashing his brilliant white teeth.
Anton pulled out his hand and examined his finger. The bleeding had stopped, leaving only a tiny red dot on the punctured skin. “What did you cut me with?”
“Pocketknife lah,” said Amal. “Clean lah, don’t worry. This is custom, bring luck!”
At lunch Amal brought Anton to a stall along Tras Street where he was fed roast chicken with rice cooked in its drippings. The meal came with a side serving of cucumbers spiced and pickled in vinegar. They lunched around a crate placed on the tarmac, and sat on stools no higher than a shoebox.
“How do you keep your teeth so white?” said Anton.
Amal showed him a small round tin containing a certain brand of tooth powder. “I also sell this at Change Alley.” He marketed it with another of his trademark grins. “You want can sell it together lah. These days we must sell everything to make money.”
“I’d prefer this. It’s more legal.”
Amal snivelled. “Very little money lah, all these kuching kurak things. Sell until die only earn peanuts. But if you got time you follow me, I show you better business.”
After lunch they went to South Bridge Road where a tall Sikh directed traffic with a pair of wicker wings strapped to his back. At the service store of a petrol station, before a tight-faced woman standing behind a glass and wood counter, Amal announced his arrival with a pompous display of opened arms. She reciprocated Amal’s gregariousness with an uneasy smile and went to the back to fetch someone.
Anton examined cans of lubricants, motor oil and cigarettes stacked inside glass cases. The air was sweltering despite an electric fan chugging away laboriously on a table.
“I supply motor oil and lubricants to our dear colonial masters.” Amal whispered to Anton over another head-waggle. “Business better during the Great War lah. I can take bigger cut. Now only small commission.”
Anton nodded in comprehension.
“You got memory problems?” Amal tapped his own oiled hair.
Anton’s eyes grew wide. “How’d you know?”
“I know many things,” Amal went to a dusty rack and picked out a bottle of clear red fluid and pushed it to him. “Take this, three times a day. I sell it, so I know it’s very good.”
“Wait…” Anton didn’t know what to do with the bottle. “It’s impossible that you—”
Before he could finish the woman returned with a tall man and once more Amal threw out his arms in greeting. The man, initially stern-faced like the woman, became affable as soon as he saw Amal and greeted him with similar zest.
“Koon!” Amal hauled Anton over by his arm. “I got new partner. Meet Anton.”
Anton shook hands cordially with the stranger named Koon, whom he found had piercingly large eyes. After the formalities Amal and Koon began conferring in low tones over something about renting trucks and getting something across the new causeway. Then Amal signed some chits and pushed himself away from the counter, sighing, and seeming very satisfied over a deal made.
“Heard your wife give birth already yah?” He tilted his chin towards the back of the store, where the woman had gone.
Koon’s handsome smile wrinkled the corners of his eyes. He called over his shoulder in a Mandarin dialect Anton didn’t know, and in time the woman emerged bearing a bundle in her arms. Anton wasn’t inclined to look because he didn’t know the family. But Amal went right for it. He parted the swaddle and started cooing expertly at the infant.
“Born September,” said Koon, impressed and amused by Amal’s repertoire of baby language. “Almost two months old now.”
“What’s his name?”
“Kuan Yew,” said Koon.
Amal flashed an exaggerated look of disgust. “Hard to call lah—” said he, prolonging the last syllable into that growling drawl of his.
But Koon, evidently familiar with Amal’s droll candour, merely chuckled. “His grandfather wanted to name him Harry.”
Amal’s grimace passed into a grin. “I like Harry better.” He then turned to Anton who was silently observing them from behind. “What you think? The Kuan-yin or Harry?”
This put Anton in a spot. Amal perceived his discomfort and immediately threw an arm over his shoulder, chortling boisterously and showing off his blood-red tongue against his pearly white teeth. “We going to be great business partners, eh?”
“Yes, Amal,” said Anton undecidedly. “I suppose we are.”
35
THE EXECUTIONERS HUNT
HIS ARMS ARE wrenched behind his back in a way that if he stops walking they will hurt even more. A large hand clasps over his mouth and foils his attempt to holler. Whoever is holding him feels like a giant. In no time Landon is shoved into yet another car. He is kicking, thrashing. The jab of a fist across his left cheek almost knocks him cold.
Landon clutches his swelling jaw and glares wide-eyed at his assailant.
“Sorry.” John steps on the accelerator. “It was the only way to get you in.”
Screeching, the car reverses across the driveway. It catapults over a speed hump and sends sparks flying. To the crank of gears the car bolts forth with an impatient groan and purrs down a larger road. Landon lunges for the door handle and John yanks him back.
“Dr E.W. Peck is dead.”
Friday. Landon shudders at the news. Guilt lances deep into his heart.
“I warned you about not getting too close,” John adds.
“Where the hell were you?”
“At your house, when she took you.” John squints through the windshield, slabs of lamplight passing across his face. “I tried to get you out.”
“And failed.”
There is resentment in the sidelong glance John throws at him. “If you understand her abilities I hope you’d think better of me. She fought like a ghost,” he confesses. “I had to let her kill me before I could get to you.”
“How?”
“Worked out a struggle; switched her weapon for one bugged with a Neut—what we call a neuro-transmitter.” He swerves and the car skids a little. “An obsolete tool that tricked her brain into thinking she had blown my head open. Afforded me a break but it didn’t turn out the way I wanted.”
“And Cheok?”
John’s gaze freezes through the windshield. “She slit his throat.”
It almost sends Landon into a seizure. He watches one passing streetlight after another and tries to remember Cheok but sees only parts of him: that thick, sweating chest, the stumpy arms, the pink cellophane bags with food, the way he placed his beer can on his belly…
“The Tracker was sent for him because the order for you just came in.” John tosses him something black and intensely familiar.
His journal.
Landon yields to a surge of anger. “Didn’t figure you for a thief.”
John shrugs off the accusation. “CODEX knows you’re the real deal. It turns out you’re hiding something they want and your Tracker left me a message that led to the journal, though I can’t imagine why she’d do that.” He nods at the book. “First entry, 1859.”