Dead Money

by Srinath Adiga

  What Readers are Saying:

  “A riveting roller-coaster read that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go. An extremely timely injection of dark humour and sharp insight that I desperately needed given current global events. This is a definite instant-recommendation to anyone looking for a sharp, intelligent read.”

  “A wonderfully clever novel that humorously taps into the mind-boggling (and often disturbing) strength of religious belief, and how the tentacles of capitalism are never too far away to cash in. Written with insight and a searing wit, it feels so timely in a world where we’re more fearful about the future than ever before.”

  “Srinath Adiga brings his brilliant concept to life with insight, humour, compassion and intellect.”

  “Unputdownable. The sense of prescience in the book is unbelievable and really touches a chord with its portrayal of a dystopian world exacerbated by a pandemic and feels so close to what is happening today.”

  “Dead Money is not easy read. In its center is something that is very controversial and could be or maybe should be unbelievable but Srinath Adiga sells it to us. When I started reading I thought this was a joke but as the story unfolded I lost my humor and stopped laughing and started thinking and I couldn’t stop reading. I highly recommend this book.”

  “Based on a brilliant concept and structured in a unique way—it had me reading when I should have been working. The style of writing is easy to read, mixed with interesting characters and locations, making it a book that I would thoroughly recommend to anyone.”

  to my parents

  Copyright © 2021 Srinath Adiga

  Cover and internal design © 2021 Central Avenue Marketing Ltd.

  Cover Design: Michelle Halket

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Central Avenue Publishing, an imprint of Central Avenue Marketing Ltd.

  www.centralavenuepublishing.com

  Published in Canada

  Printed in United States of America

  1. FICTION/Thrillers 2. FICTION/Dystopian

  DEAD MONEY

  Trade Paperback: 978-1-77168-216-9

  Epub: 978-1-77168-217-6

  Mobi: 978-1-77168-218-3

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  “All money is a matter of belief.”

  —Adam Smith

  book 1 : raymond

  Hong Kong, February 2002

  1.

  SILENCE SWOOPED OVER THE FLOOR OF THE stock exchange. In the concentric circles of trading booths, red jackets draped seat backs, computers in sleep mode flashed hypnotic patterns. Raymond stood in the empty pit, fists hanging by the sides of his body, face leaking sweat despite the chilly draft from the air-conditioning vents.

  He raised his head, slowly craning his neck toward the giant LED screen hanging from the ceiling. As he stared at the red and yellow digits frozen in time, it finally sank in.

  I’m finished.

  The jacket dropped from his slackening hand. A second later, his knees collapsed, dragging his wiry five-foot-eleven frame to the floor. He knelt on a carpet littered with trading slips, deafened by the sound of his own ragged breathing.

  What am I going to tell Wu?

  The face appeared in his vision: dark and scuffed like an aged chopping board, black lips bent in a smile. Raymond recalled his first visit to the gangster’s godown in Kwan Tung three years earlier. He remembered, vividly, walking in the long shadows of boxes stacked in neat columns under the sloped ceiling, his heart beating irregularly with the thrill of eating the forbidden fruit. He looked up at the boxes as he passed them, trying to guess their contents: fake Rolexes? Pirated DVDs? Sex toys?

  They came to an office furnished with a steel table, two chairs and a filing cabinet under a poster of pop star Franky Soo. A large window overlooked the warehouse they’d walked through.

  The gangster motioned him to have a seat and opened a drawer.

  “Some people are crazy about guns, but you know me. I like getting my hands dirty,” Wu said, holding up a meat cleaver. “I used this for my first chopping. A heroin dealer who killed my brother. You should’ve seen what I did to him. A butcher would’ve been proud.” He grinned and raised the kitchen implement toward the bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. The blade, cared for like a family jewel, flashed, light streaking down its precise edge like a comet, expanding and dissipating when a twirl of the wrist turned the knife. The gangster ran his nicotine-stained fingertips along the shiny surface as if he were petting it, the other hand almost blending in with the handle’s dark wood.

  “Weight is paramount,” he explained. “The heavier the blade, the greater the chopping momentum. The trick is not to hack through the bones, but the space between them. It’s an art.”

  On the exchange floor, Raymond’s stomach convulsed. The projectile vomit came up with a force that nearly ripped his lungs out.

  A few minutes later, he exited the stock-exchange building in a daze, descending the stairs to street level one step at a time. On the pavement, he raised his arm. A taxi swooped across three lanes and came to an abrupt halt near his feet. He slid into the backseat of the beat-up red and silver Corolla.

  “Where do you wanna go?” the driver asked.

  Raymond stared at the man’s eyes in the rearview mirror as if he’d been asked a trick question.

  “Where do you wanna go?” The voice snapped with impatience.

  “Uh … TST,” Raymond mumbled, and turned to look out the window. They were on Des Vouex Road in Hong Kong Central. A clump of Filipino maids gossiped in the shade of the overpass. The pedestrian light blinked red, and an old man with thin legs hurried comically on the zebra crossing. A tram lumbered to a halt in the middle of the street, the rickety box-on-wheels a glaring anachronism against the backdrop of steel and glass towers.

  Everything looked so normal, yet brightly surreal at the same time. Suddenly, Raymond jerked his head as if he’d been shaken awake.

  Fifty-three million. How the fuck did you lose fifty-three million? In just a few months?

  Actually, it wasn’t that hard. You started with one wrong decision. For example, you went long on the Thai baht even though the Bangkok property market looked a bit shaky. It wasn’t as stupid a bet as it seemed. The government had been using its foreign-exchange reserves to prop up the currency. There was nothing to suggest that this policy was going to change. But one day after swearing to defend the baht, the government floated the damn thing, and you were a hundred grand down.

  On another day, you’d cut your losses and move on. But that day, you made the rookie error of letting your ego get in the way. You doubled down, and that failed, too. One thing lead to another. As your mistakes cascaded, your judgement fell by the wayside, as did your appetite. You were living on coffee and treacly buns from the Chinese bakery down the road.

  Each time you looked in the mirror, you balked. The face, long and narrow, crowned with spiky hair, was now a Bubble Wrap of zits. Eyes pink and muddy, as though they’d sucked away all the blood from the body. You’d turned paler. Your veins were more prominent, so your skin started to look like marble, but not in a nice way.

  You tried to project confidence, but your shoulders, burdened by your secret, were letting you down. One look and other traders knew you were sitting on an Everest of losses. Toward the end, the risks you took wer
e plain ridiculous, based on nothing more than hope hanging by a spider’s thread.

  At this point, Lady Luck, gold digger that she was, decided that now was the time she was going to walk out on you. In fact, when you rolled the dice for the last time, she went out of her way to fuck you over. Something completely unprecedented happened: the cunts at HKMA raised the interbank rate to two hundred and sixty percent.

  Game over.

  The same shit happened in casinos. Suckers threw good money after bad until there was no money left, good or bad. But casinos had well-defined table limits. At Wu’s joint in Macau, for example, it was half a million for high rollers. If you ran out of money, the establishment would extend credit, but not beyond what they judged to be your means to pay it back. That was why stock markets were more dangerous than casinos. There was no ceiling, but there was also no floor.

  2.

  THE BAR IN THE BACKSTREETS OF TSIM SHA TSUI looked like a dozen others along the strip: high tables, checked floors, paper lamps hanging from the ceiling. Raymond had shrunk into a corner like a man hiding from the world. He was on his second scotch when he caught sight of George, maneuvering his belly through the narrow gaps between the tables.

  George looked like a cartoon drawing come to life: round face, large eyes, ears jutting out of the head like wing mirrors. His hair was plastered down to the scalp, a sharp fringe cutting his forehead in half. He placed one palm on the table and levered himself onto the high stool with a grunt.

  “I can’t stay for too long,” he said, sounding exhausted. His face bore the sleep-deprived look of a new father.

  Raymond drank some whisky to steady his nerves. “I’m in trouble.”

  George rolled his eyes. “Of course you are.”

  “No, this time, I’m in deep shit.”

  Raymond leaned closer and told George everything: working for Wu, losing the gangster’s money in the stock market.

  George gasped. “How much did you lose?”

  “Fifty-three,” Raymond whispered.

  “Million?!” George shrieked. Raymond gestured for him to keep his voice down.

  The lights dimmed, and the music became louder. The TV on the wall behind them played Cantopop music videos: Cantonese pop songs with the chorus in English.

  “Can you turn it down?” Raymond scowled at the waitress, a flustered-looking woman in a tank top and Daisy Duke denim shorts. She nodded and left hurriedly.

  “You idiot! How on earth did you get mixed up with this guy?” George said, finally coming out of shock. “How did you two even meet?”

  Raymond lowered his head and curled his hand around the whisky glass.

  Walk into a bank with a gun, the police will come after you. Walk in with a suit, they’ll give you their pension. Crime doesn’t pay. Not as much as leveraged buying and selling of financial instruments. I’ve got a special talent. I can read the market like an open book.

  These had been his exact words to the gangster when they’d met four years earlier, a drunken business pitch made in a dimly lit whorehouse in Jordan. The encounter had taken place the same day the assholes at Sterling Finance fired him for making risky trades. Even though these so-called risky trades had earned his bosses fat bonuses. Fucking corporate hypocrisy.

  “I needed a job,” Raymond said.

  “Why didn’t you get a normal job … you know, like normal people?”

  “I was bored. And I’m not normal. You should know that by now.”

  “Bored? If you’re bored, you go and see a movie. Not hang out with gangsters!” George cried in exasperation.

  Raymond waved his hand dismissively. He didn’t expect a middle-class wage slave like George to understand that boredom was a curse of intelligence. A yearning for something higher and purer. And that’s what he had with Wu: the game at its purest, just you against the markets. No one from Risk telling you what you could and couldn’t do. You had all the leverage you wanted. But there were no soft landings, either. You were like a tightrope walker crossing a canyon. The stakes were high. But the knowledge that falling wasn’t an option got you home every time.

  Except this one fucking time. Raymond gritted his teeth and turned to the TV. The music was driving him insane. The waitress was walking past, tray under her arm. He reached out and grasped her wrist.

  “I told you to turn the TV down. Do you people ever listen?”

  She snatched her arm back and shot him a dirty look.

  George shrugged. “You know what? Maybe you should just come clean. Sometimes that’s the best way to play it.”

  Raymond gaped at his friend’s stupidity. “Are you crazy? Do you know what they’re going to do to me? Have you seen any mafia movies?”

  Color drained from George’s moon face. “You had everything going for you. Money, car, a flat in Mid-Levels. Then you go and do this. When will you stop pissing on live wires and grow up?” His voice trembled, along with the rolls of puppy fat in his cheeks.

  “Please, George.” Raymond winced as if he had a headache. “If I wanted a lecture, I’d have gone to college.”

  George sighed and looked away.

  A movement over his shoulder made Raymond snap straight. A short, dark man in a bright yellow shirt was scanning the room as if searching for someone. Raymond hurriedly jumped off the stool, elbow knocking his glass as he scrambled to his feet. But next second, he realized the man wasn’t who he thought.

  “Wh-What’s going on?” George asked, startled.

  “Nothing. Nothing.” A relieved Raymond returned to the stool. His hands were still shaking as he straightened the toppled glass.

  “What am I going to do?” Raymond held his head in his hands.

  George leaned in. “I know someone who might be able to help,” he said, raising one eyebrow.

  “Who?” Raymond asked, bracing himself for another harebrained suggestion.

  “Granny Lau.”

  “Has she got the money?”

  “No, but she has special powers. She’s a villain hitter. My uncle went to her when he was having problems with his boss. A few days later, the boss …” George clucked and made a slashing gesture across his bulging throat.

  “Dead?”

  “Fired.”

  Raymond thumped the table.

  “Damn it, George. My life’s in danger and the best you can do is come up with some superstitious crap?”

  He swiveled to the TV, gnashing his teeth. That infernal music. Had the waitress turned it up? She was behind the bar, wiping a glass while gazing adoringly at the boyish face of Franky Soo on the big screen. Franky appeared to be looking straight at Raymond, crooning in a syrupy voice:

  “I’m not afraid of dying

  ’Cause I know I’m going to be happy forever …

  Yes, happy forever … with youuuuuuuuuuu.”

  Raymond picked up his glass and hurled it at the TV.

  3.

  THE TUNNEL FINISHED IN ABERDEEN IN THE south of Hong Kong Island. Raymond squinted behind the wheel as the Maserati passed from darkness to light. Buildings rose on either side of the snaking highway: skinny condominiums interspersed with squat public housing and shopping malls, cranes erecting more condominiums, more shopping malls. An entire urban universe crammed between the hill and the ocean, cloaked in the golden spray of the setting sun.

  Raymond drew a deep breath, inhaling the new-car smell as if he were snorting a drug. His last automobile, a red 911, had been wrecked while attempting a drift. It was a bit of a shame. But if you took into account the sheer exhilaration he’d felt moments before the spinning vehicle crashed into a concrete barrier, you could argue it was worth it. Because unlike some people, he wasn’t out to compensate for a small cock. He’d bought a race car so he could race it. And when you raced it, shit happened, right?

  Now, as he sat low in the new Maserati, holding the wheel at three and nine, he felt the same surge of recklessness. He locked his elbows and squeezed the pedal. The vehicle accelerated in a squeal of h
igh notes. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a camera flash. But Raymond didn’t ease up. A four-hundred-and-fifty-dollar speeding fine wasn’t a problem. A fifty-three-million-dollar debt was.

  He kept his foot on the throttle until the freeway fizzled into a two-lane road, then he let go, relaxing his arms at the same time. The orange tach needle retreated across the dial as the vehicle slowed behind a glowing taillight. He let out a sigh of pleasure. Invigorated by the rush of adrenaline, his mind returned to his fifty-three-million-dollar problem.

  There was no written contract between them. Every three months, Raymond sent Wu a statement of account, like a normal finance company. The last one was forged. As was the one before. Raymond had crammed them with enough fictitious trades to confuse the gangster in case he looked closely, which he never did because he trusted Raymond. In theory, Raymond could keep mailing these forged statements. But at some point, Wu would want his money back—if not all, then some of it. The problem was, Raymond didn’t know when. It could be the next day. It could be a year away, or five. How long could he play this dangerous poker game, pretending everything was fine?

  So, option one: dump the car at Hunghom, catch the train to Shenzhen and disappear into the vast countryside of the mainland. But the triads, like McDonalds and Starbucks, were everywhere. Raymond remembered one instance when a low-level functionary had disappeared with some money that belonged to Wu. A year later, they tracked him to a small village in Canada, which was bad news not only for the man but for his entire family, whose chopped-up remains were found in oil drums floating off the coast of Lantau Island. The recollection sent a chilly spasm down Raymond’s spine. At that precise moment, the scene outside darkened.

  From the open sky of the city, he’d entered the dusk of the forest. Headlights turned on automatically, illuminating the tarmac in overlapping funnels. Behind the wheel, the instrument panel was aglow.