Mai shakes her head. “No. I came alone. I catch a ride with a farmer near the edge of the city. He brings me on his long-tail, up the khlongs. I always get here early.”
Hock Seng, looks down at the two sick men, then at the girl. Four of them in the room. Four. He winces at the thought. Such an unlucky number, four. Sz. Four. Sz. Death. A better number is three, or two…
Or one.
One is the ideal number for a secret. Unconsciously, Hock Seng’s hand strays to his knife, considering the girl. Messy. But still, less messy than the number four.
The girl’s long black hair is tied up in a careful bun at the top of her head to keep it free of running line equipment. Her neck is exposed. Her eyes are trusting. Hock Seng looks away, evaluating the bodies again, calculating against inauspicious numbers. Four, four, four. Death. One is better. One is best. He takes a breath and makes a decision. He reaches for her. “Come here.”
She hesitates. He scowls at her, waves her closer. “You want to keep your job, yes?”
She nods slowly.
“Then come. These two need to go to a hospital, yes? We cannot help them here. And two sick men lying beside the algae baths will do none of us any good. Not if we want to keep on eating. Gather them and meet me at the side door. Not through the main room. The side one. Go under the line with them, through the service access. The side, you understand?”
She nods uncertainly. He claps his hands together, spurring her to action. “Quickly now! Quickly! Drag them if you must!” He motions to the bodies. “People will be arriving. One person is already too many to keep a secret, and here we stand, four. Let us make this a secret of two, at least. Anything is better than four.” Death.
She takes a frightened breath, then her eyes narrow with determination. She crouches to wrestle with Kit’s body. Hock Seng watches to make sure she is underway, then ducks out.
In the main hall, people are still stowing their lunches and laughing. No one in a rush. The Thai are lazy. If they were Chinese yellow cards they would already be working and all would be lost. For once, Hock Seng is glad he works with Thais. He still has a little time. He ducks out the side door.
Outside, the alley is empty. High factory walls pin the narrow way. Hock Seng jogs toward Phosri Street and its jumble of breakfast stalls, steaming noodles and ragged children. A cycle rickshaw flashes across the gap.
“Wei!” He calls out. “Samloh! Samloh! Wait!” But he is too far away.
He limps to the intersection favoring his bad knee, catches sight of another rickshaw. He flags the driver. The man glances behind to see if he is threatened by competition, then angles toward Hock Seng with a lackadaisical pedal, allowing the slight slope of the street to let him coast.
“Faster!” Hock Seng shouts. “Kuai yidian, you dog fucker!”
The man ignores the abuse, lets his cycle coast to a stop. “You called me, Khun?”
Hock Seng climbs in and waves down the alley. “I have passengers for you, if you’ll hurry up.”
The man grunts and steers down the narrow way. The cycle’s chain clicks sedately. Hock Seng grits his teeth. “Double pay. Quickly, quickly!” He motions the man onward.
The man leans on his pedals marginally more aggressively, but still he shambles like a megodont. Ahead, Mai appears. For a moment Hock Seng is afraid that she will be stupid and bring out the bodies before the rickshaw arrives, but Kit is nowhere in sight. It is only when the rickshaw comes close that she slips back inside and drags the first incoherent worker into view.
The rickshaw man shies at the body, but Hock Seng leans over his shoulder and hisses, “Triple pay.” He grabs Kit and wrestles him into the rickshaw’s seat before the man can protest. Mai disappears back inside.
The cycle-rickshaw man eyes Kit. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s a drunk,” Hock Seng says. “He and his friend. If the boss catches them, they’re fired.”
“He doesn’t look drunk.”
“You’re mistaken.”
“No. That one looks like—”
Hock Seng stares at the man. “The white shirts will cast their net over you as surely as they will me. He is on your seat, in your breathing presence.”
The rickshaw man’s eyes widen. He draws back. Hock Seng nods confirmation, holding the man’s gaze. “There’s no point in making a complaint now. I say they are drunk. Triple pay to you, when you return.”
Mai reappears with the second worker and Hock Seng helps lever him into the seat. He ushers Mai into the rickshaw with the men. “Hospitals,” he says. And then he leans close. “But different hospitals, yes?”
Mai nods sharply.
“Good. Clever girl.” Hock Seng steps back. “Go on then! Go! Beat it!”
The rickshaw man sets off, pedalling much faster than before. Hock Seng watches them ride away, the heads of the three passengers and the rickshaw man, rattling and bouncing as the bike’s wheels chatter over cobbles. He grimaces. Four again. A bad number for certain. He pushes paranoia away, wondering if he is even capable of strategizing these days. An old man who jumps at shadows.
Would he be better off if Mai and Kit and Srimuang were feeding red-fin plaa in the murky waters of the Chao Phraya River? If they were just a collection of anonymous parts bobbing amongst the roiling bodies of hungry carp, would he not be safer?
Four. Sz. Death.
His skin crawls at the proximity of sickness. He rubs his hands unconsciously against his trousers. He’ll have to bathe. Rub down with a chlorine bleach scrub and hope it does the job. The rickshaw man turns out of sight, carrying his diseased cargo. Hock Seng heads back inside, to the factory floor where the lines rattle with test runs and voices call out to one another in morning greeting.
Please let it be coincidence, he prays. Please don’t let it be the line.
17
How many nights has he gone without sleep? One night? Ten nights? Ten thousand? Jaidee cannot remember anymore. Moons have passed awake and suns have passed in dream and everything is counting, numbers spinning out in a steady accumulation of days and hopes dashed. Propitiations and offerings unanswered. Fortune tellers with their predictions. Generals with their assurances. Tomorrow. Three days, for certain. There are indications of a softening, whispers of a woman’s whereabouts.
Patience.
Jai yen.
Cool heart.
Nothing.
Apologies and humiliations in the newspapers. A personal criticism, by his own hand. More false admissions of greed and corruption. 200,000 baht that he cannot repay. Editorials and condemnations in the whisper sheets. Stories spread by his enemies that he spent stolen money on whores, on a private stock of U-Tex rice against famines, that he squirrelled it away for personal benefit. The Tiger was nothing more than another corrupt white shirt.
Fines are meted out. The last of his property confiscated. The family home burned, a funeral pyre, while his mother-in-law wails and his sons, already stripped of his name, watch somnolent.
It has been decided that he will not serve his penance in a nearby monastery. Instead he will be banished to the forests of Phra Kritipong where ivory beetle has turned the land into waste and where blister rust rewrites waft across the border from Burma. Banished to the wastelands to contemplate the damma. His eyebrows are shaved, his head is a simple pate. If he happens to return from his penance alive, he looks forward to a lifetime of guarding yellow cards in their internments down in the south: the lowest work, for the lowest white shirt.