Thai Horse

‘Come, Shang, come to your father,’ the old man whispered.

The fish finally swam into his hand, pecking at it, looking for food. Wang grabbed the fish arid quickly dropped it in one of the other tanks. Almost immediately it was attacked by three of the fish in the new tank, two of them less than half its size. The tang floundered, darted out of the way only to be hit behind the gills by a small black-and- white domino. The tang flipped to its side, wiggling its tail frantically, but it was already moribund. The two men watched while half a dozen fish pecked the tang to death.

‘Next to human beings, fish are the most territorial creatures on earth,’ the old man said. ‘If you inject a stranger into their home, they will kill it. Even the small fish attack it. So the big fish is overwhelmed. Then they break his ballast and he is helpless.’ He looked up at Fong. ‘Do you understand what I am saying?’

Fong nodded.

‘Good. You were the finest Red Pole in the Chiu Chaos,’ Wang said, ‘but to declare war on the house of Tsu Fi and attack him in his own environment was suicidal, as Lung discovered.’

‘I would not make the same mistakes,’ Fong said.

The old man stared at him for several more moments and nodded again. ‘We do a lot of business in Hong Kong,’ he said. ‘Cohen is respected and feared among all the Sun Lee On. He is powerful in the business community. Doing business in Hong Kong means doing business with him.

You must swallow your pride. Joe Lung compromised you. The rules of the Society require that you make an apology and a gesture to satisfy the insult

‘That’s why I flew back from Bangkok this morning.’

‘Hai. Then call him now. Arrange a meeting for later today. Get this over with. It is an annoyance I do not care to put up with any longer than necessary.’

‘I will do it now,’ said Fong.

‘Mm goi,’ said the old man, ‘I am also aware that you, too, have a ch’u-tiao against the American. If necessary, you must be prepared to put it aside.’

Fong looked surprised.

‘I cannot do that!’ the new san wong said, but his predecessor and mentor cut him off before he could go on. ‘You can and will, if it is necessary,’ he said with finality and turned back to his fish,

Fong knew the discussion was over. He bowed to his master.

‘Jo sahn,’ he said,

‘Jo sahn,’ the old man answered.

DAFFY

The smell of cordite still hung in the air of the house as they waited for Daphne to arrive. According to Cohen, Daphne was the only person they could trust who still traveled upriver into that dangerous land and dealt with the brigands, mainly in materials, Thai silk and madras cotton, which she smuggled into the colony duty-free. She had two things going for her: nothing intimidated her, which earned her the respect of the pirates, and she dealt in gold. Even the Ts’e K’am Men Ti did not bite that strong a hand.

But Hatcher also suspected Cohen’ s motives. Could he possibly be playing Cupid? Hatcher’s first encounter with Daphne had been the result of a rather perverse Cohen joke. The Tsu Fi had been certain that Hatcher would be attracted to her and Just as certain that she would ignore the brash Yankee gwai-lo.

Cohen, too, was thinking of that night. In a funny way, Daphne Chien brought the friendship between Cohen and Hatcher full circle, for it was Hatcher’s first meeting with her that had strengthened what had been until then a tentative friendship between the two men, a time for sparring and contemplation and even testing. From the beginning, Cohen had seen in his new friend a man of curious and sometimes frightening balance — a man of intense loyalties and an outrageous sense of humor balanced by a dark, deviously clever, dangerous and unpredictable streak. He had seen the dark side of Hatcher’s persona, the human trigger that could kill with the suddenness and impartiality of a sprung mouse-trap. And then there was Hatcher’s charmingly eccentric side. He slept on the floor, preferred to read in Chinese rather than English, sometimes would go two or three days without eating, and had a bizarre memory, which excluded obvious details and retained only what Hatcher considered important. He knew, for instance, that Sam-Sam Sam was left-handed but could not describe a single one of the tattoos that covered the pirate’s body.

Hatcher survived by keeping these two disparate sides of his personality in careful balance, never letting one overpower the other, like a coin perched on its edge.

To Cohen, all of these traits made Hatcher a fascinating, often endearing, and potentially trustworthy friend, but it was at Hatcher’s first meeting with Daphne that Cohen had seen a gentle, almost boyish side of Hatcher’s personality, although the balance was still there. On the one hand, he was surprisingly naive; on the other, outrageously audacious.

They had just arrived at the Governor’s Ball, the annual mob scene at the Chinese Palace, to which Cohen, as a joke, had conned Hatcher into going, knowing the mysterious riverman hated crowds, cocktail parties, dances and snobs — all the reasons why everyone else went. Hatcher spotted Daphne the moment they arrived at the party. She was standing on the other side of the main ballroom, a stunning, unattainable statue, observing the shoulder-to-shoulder cocktail crowd with an air of icy indifference. Cohen sensed Hatcher’s immediate infatuation.