Dead Money

by Srinath Adiga

  The road clung to the hill, rising and dipping in a broken tunnel of figs, cassias and bauhinias. Smudges of ocean, darkened in the setting sun, appeared and vanished from view. This was the other Hong Kong, concrete and nature coexisting in an uneasy truce.

  For the next while, his attention was focused on getting through the winding stretch. When the road straightened and levelled at the top of the hill, his mind returned to the problem.

  Option two: replace the money. But how? It would take forever if he were to rely purely on income from commissions. To make that kind of cash, he needed to think like an entrepreneur. There were seven million people in Hong Kong. If he could extract eight dollars from each person, just eight, he’d have the money he owed Wu plus spare change. Easy when you looked at it that way. Of course, he knew it was anything but. He needed something extraordinary, a big idea.

  A range of blow-up dolls resembling movie stars. He’d suggested this once when he learned about the triad’s involvement in the sex-toy market. Wu laughed but informed Raymond that he didn’t see the need for this diversification.

  Raymond recalled other random ideas he’d had over time: a calorimeter for dogs, a heated knife that would make it easier to spread butter, sneakers with a built-in foot massager. He discarded all of them, as they didn’t feel big enough.

  So, if he wasn’t going to run away or replace the money, then what was he going to do?

  Option three: No Wu, no problem. Raymond swallowed.

  “You’re like a brother to me,” the gangster had said to him once. “We were both fucked by life, but we fucked it right back, didn’t we?” Of course, Raymond knew this declaration of brotherly love came with a disclaimer. If Wu found out about the fifty-three million dollars, the statement would be rendered null and void, as would Raymond’s existence, so he was fully justified in striking first. The question was how.

  He cast his mind back to a couple of Wu’s foot soldiers from Yau Ma Tei who’d once privately grumbled about their boss. Would they do it if he made it worth their while? Raymond wondered. But next moment, he decided this was way too risky. Loyalty was a highly prized commodity among the triads. If word circulated back to Wu, that would be the end of it.

  Raymond pounded the wheel in frustration. He’d been through this thought process several times in the last forty-eight hours. And in each instance, he’d reached the same dead end. There had to be something else.

  He glanced out the window. The foliage on either side tapered to a clearing. A village appeared in the fading light, a cavalry of colorful one-and two-story houses climbing the hill slope. A slice of Hong Kong from a bygone time, preserved in formaldehyde.

  He sped through the village, then past the university campus. As he came over the top of the ridge, the sporadic clusters of lights gave way to an endless sprawl, broken only by the ever-shrinking black ribbon of the harbor. Orange lights, white lights, yellow lights, glittering like an army of conquering fireflies.

  A series of sharp bends brought him to a flyover that dipped sharply through the skinny high-rises of Sheung Wan. Lights streaked past his window as his foot squeezed the pedal. The engine’s operatic pitch, the tailwind of gravity, the judder of the wheel in his hands. They were making his stomach tingle. He pushed back in the seat, arms straight, picturing himself in a sci-fi movie, piloting a levitating car at warp speed through a built-up neon dystopia.

  Option four: a jerk of the hand, left or right. The drop was a few hundred feet. In the blink of an eye, problem solved.

  4.

  ANYONE WHO SAID SUICIDE WAS AN ACT OF cowardice was full of shit. Driving a car off a flyover. Slashing one’s wrists in the bath. Swallowing an entire bottle of barbiturates. These weren’t for the faint of heart. On the contrary, they required courage beyond the ordinary. And if one did possess the said measure of courage, then what was to hold one back? A sense of purpose, perhaps. To some this could be an elusive thing. Yet for Raymond it had never been a problem, right from day one. Or come to think of it, even before.

  “The eighth day of the eighth month is doubly lucky. You’ll be promoted to supervisor if your wife gives birth on this day,” the fortune-teller had said to Raymond’s father.

  The following month, at a time engineered precisely by a C-section procedure, Raymond arrived in the world, a wrinkly good-luck charm covered in amniotic fluid, a fragile six-pound lottery ticket for a man looking for a handout from life.

  Unfortunately, things didn’t quite go to plan.

  Barely a week later, at a construction site in Lai Chi Kok, a ten-ton concrete pipe slipped through the leather restraints and fell on his father’s foot, smashing every bone below the ankle. The doctors at King Edward Hospital somehow managed to piece together the jigsaw of phalanges and calcaneus, but they could do little to stop the recurring pain except prescribe palliatives well beyond the means of someone on a disability allowance.

  So, who’d had to cop the blame for this tragic outcome? Not the lying fortune-teller. Not Raymond’s father, for being stupid enough to believe the fortune-teller and for daydreaming at work. Not the private hospital that took his last penny for the C-section operation. You guessed it. It was Raymond’s fault. And not a day passed when he wasn’t reminded of it. Usually, with the aid of a belt.

  The tragedy of life was that no matter how bad things were, one got used to it. The crack of leather against skin, the bruises that made it painful to lie on the back, the festering odor in the apartment where not even air had escape. With time, they all folded themselves into an everyday sense of normalcy, until one day he was old enough to realize that this wasn’t normal. Normal kids didn’t cower under the bed when they heard their father’s footsteps. They didn’t press their palms to their ears when their mother mewled like an orphaned kitten after being badly beaten. And with the realization came a new purpose. Escape. But Raymond knew he had to bide his time.

  For years, he braved the treadmill of abuse and guilt, keenly noting the changes in his body, appreciating that his lanky frame might never possess the strength to take on his father, but that it was capable of speed and agility. So, after school finished, he went straight to the playground. He removed his fawn shirt, folding it neatly, placing it to one side next to his shoes. Then he practiced running up and down the football field in his undershirt and shorts with the fervor of someone training for the Olympics, much to the amusement of other kids who’d gathered around to watch the spectacle. But he let their laughter wash off his back.

  The moment of reckoning arrived one Sunday, shortly after his thirteenth birthday, when his father dragged his mother by the hair into the kitchen. Something in Raymond finally snapped. Maybe it was the hormones, all the testosterone from watching Rambo the previous night. Maybe it was the fact that she was being called a slut, a word whose derisiveness he now fully understood. But whatever it was, Raymond charged, letting out a war cry, and then with the hammer concealed behind his back, he hit the monster. Right on the balls. A place where it really hurt, not just physically but also psychologically. Because even at that age, Raymond was perceptive enough to know much of his father’s pain and frustration arose from the impotence caused by his medication.

  The man sank to his knees. Boy, what a sight that was, the bastard doubled over in pain, hands clasped between his legs, globule of spittle abseiling from the open mouth. Raymond savored every moment of it. And when he saw the lumpy face screw with rage, he turned around and ran, out the door, down the stairwell to the ground floor, through the long corridor, past the screaming children in the playground.

  After exiting the gates of the housing estate, he charged down the sidewalk, not daring to look back or stop until he reached the safety of the congested streets of Kowloon City. There he sneaked into an unattended coffin shop and hid inside a rosewood casket. When he emerged the following morning, the shop owner almost fainted, thinking Raymond had risen from the dead.

  In a sense, he had. And what a life that second one was,
fate overcompensating, lavishing him with everything it had denied him thus far. Starting with the moment he turned up at his friend George’s doorstep (because he didn’t know where else to go). The flat was much nicer than the shithole in Lok Fu he’d run away from, and he was welcomed by parents still grieving the loss of their second son. Talk about luck.

  And then meeting George’s uncle. That was a stroke of luck too, because it was the uncle who introduced Raymond to share trading and gave him his first break. That wasn’t to say it was all down to good fortune. Far from it. But once you’d made a decision based on intuition, smarts and sound judgement, there were variables outside your control. That’s where you needed a little bit of luck. And when it was working for you, you had to milk it. Not just milk it, but push it. But the problem was knowing when to stop. You wanted to go right to the edge, except you didn’t know where the edge was until you crossed it. And now here he was, on the wrong side of the edge. Nothing to look forward to except a fifty-three-million-dollar debt and the business end of a meat cleaver.

  The more Raymond thought about it, the more he realized that what was keeping him alive wasn’t a sense of purpose. It was pure mathematics. He’d been on this planet for only twenty-eight years, and the first thirteen didn’t count.

  5.

  A WEEK AFTER LOSING THE MONEY, RAYMOND was sitting on his couch, mouth turned down, body sagging and crumpled like a deflated balloon. The TV babbled away with some crap daytime soap. The kind his mother used to watch.

  The late-morning sun washed the pale granite floor, lapping the edges of the barely used kitchen. A faint smell of garlic from last night’s takeaway hung in the air.

  There wasn’t much by way of furniture in the eighteenth-floor apartment: a white rug to match the sofa; ghost coffee table; floor lamp with a long, curving stem; a TV cabinet. But what was there had come at a hefty price tag. Sleek, modern and cold, with no trace of sentimentality. No old photographs in frames. Nothing tying him to the past or any moment in time. This was more like a hotel suite than a home, one that he could check out of any time. But right this moment, he didn’t look like he was going anywhere.

  What am I going to do?

  The phone rang. His body snapped taut. He leaned over to check the caller ID, and a bead of sweat dribbled from his temple when he saw the number.

  Wu.

  The leather squeaked as he clawed the armrest. He bit his lip, not daring to answer, because Wu would know from his voice that something was wrong.

  The phone rang and rang.

  Finally, it stopped. But the silence that filled the room in its wake was just as terrifying. A few minutes later, he wiped his temple and picked up the phone. It felt warm in the meat of his palm. He dialed with shaking hands.

  George’s voice crackled at the other end.

  “Wu’s been calling,” Raymond said with a dry mouth.

  “You think he knows?” George whispered.

  “If he did, there wouldn’t be a phone call.”

  A gentle breath and the line went quiet.

  “George?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say something, for God’s sake.” Raymond winced, cradling his chest. His heart was pumping so hard he was afraid it was going to explode and splatter the living room with blood and shards of flesh.

  “Maybe you should see that villain hitter,” George suggested gingerly.

  “What’s she going to do?”

  “Smack his photo with a shoe. Then chant magic spells to invoke the power of Kuan Ti. She’s good, Raymond. Really good,” George said, as if he were recommending a new TV he’d just bought. “Do you want her details?”

  Raymond winced in despair. A week earlier, he’d scoffed at this suggestion. But now he was willing to try anything. Even this nonsense.

  THE ADDRESS WAS in Sham Shui Po in northwest Kowloon. A warren of damp, decaying tenements crowned by aerial farms; windows with dripping air conditioners; laundry hanging from sticks like flags; stalls crowding the streets, packed with all sorts of tacky merchandise. The same shithole that Raymond had stumbled into as a seventeen-year-old after losing his virginity in a one-woman knock shop in Mong Kok.

  It took him awhile to locate the building. He’d missed it the first time because the block number was hidden under a wallpaper of real-estate notices. He turned the handle of the metal door and pushed it open. The shopping bag in his hand brushed his knee as he walked in. It contained a Polaroid and a pair of brand-new hiking boots, still in the box. The photo, taken on board Wu’s yacht in Macau, showed the gangster posing behind the brass wheel, dressed like a bad Elvis impersonator. The boot was a size nine Timberland, oiled leather, mid cut with padded tongue. If the villain hitter was going to whack Wu with a shoe, it made sense to get something tough.

  There was no lift. The concrete stairs were littered with cotton earbuds and cigarette butts. He climbed, two steps at a time, stopping on the third floor in front of a red door. After checking the number, he knocked.

  The door opened an inch. A face peered through the gap: wan, bony, wrinkled like a cliffside. A single pale eye darted up and down his body.

  “Granny Lau?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “I need you to take care of someone for me. I’ll pay you well,” he whispered.

  The eye staring at him widened. She uttered a shrill cry and slammed the door. Raymond recoiled. Then he remembered George warning him that she was a bit eccentric. So he waited a few moments and knocked again.

  “Go away or I’m going to call the police!” the voice screamed behind the closed door. The mention of police made Raymond swivel and bolt down the stairs.

  Back on the street, the wind whipped the shop signs and filled his nose with the smell of raw meat. Stripped carcasses hung in the butchery next door, their color enhanced by tube lights wrapped in pink cellophane. A man with a bloodied apron unhooked a large roasting cut and placed it on a flat wooden disk. The cleaver came down hard, thwacking the meat. Raymond’s heart seized.

  He walked hurriedly through a current of sharp elbows and haggling voices on the busy street. Once he got to the main road, he stood at the edge of the curb, eagerly scanning for the red-and-silver shape of a taxi. A wink of sheet metal caught his eye, a mauve Lamborghini with a diamond-studded license plate, parked between two beat-up Nissans.

  His breathing stopped. Was it him? There couldn’t be two idiots in Hong Kong with such awful taste. A quick glance at the letters on the plate dispelled any doubt: TMD, abbreviation for “Fuck your mother” in Cantonese.

  It was him.

  Raymond walked backwards, very slowly, as if retreating from a hissing cobra. Then he turned around, gathering pace as he walked back toward the market. At what point he stopped walking and started running, he didn’t know. But soon, he was blasting through a blur of honking cars, screeching brakes, babbling voices, frenzied sales pitches and the urgent cries of the blinking pedestrian lights, knocking an elbow here, stepping on a foot there, tripping on something without quite falling over. Somewhere along the way, a metallic object gouged his bony leg. But he didn’t stop to soothe it. Fourteen years earlier, he’d run like this to escape his father.

  His father with the belt. Wu with the meat cleaver. Same fear.

  6.

  RAYMOND HAD NO IDEA HOW LONG HE’D BEEN running. But when he stopped, he was gasping for breath in a small park. He turned away from the glare of the sun and wiped his face, grimacing when a blade of pain stabbed his lungs.

  The park was located inside a run-down public housing estate. The kind he’d grown up in: squat dichromatic blocks with swimming-pool tiles on the wall; apartments set along mile-long corridors, thick with cooking smells; washing lines strung beside front doors. A low-rise, low-rent ecosystem.

  The children’s playground to his left was empty. The elliptical lawn in front was filled mainly with old men, walking laps on a maroon track or playing checkers on concrete tables. On his right, a lady with a poin
ty straw hat and gumboots was scooping up dead leaves in the garden.

  Raymond rested on a concrete stool.

  “Who said you could sit here?” rasped an unfriendly voice from the other side of the table. It came from a dark, shabby-looking man with helmet hair and tobacco-stained teeth.

  “This is public property,” Raymond shot back. “I’m entitled to use it as a taxpayer. In fact, I pay more tax than you. If anything, I should be telling you to fuck off. But I won’t. So, are you going to thank me?”

  The argument appeared too much for the man’s peasant brain to counter. “What’s the world coming to? One can’t even enjoy privacy when honoring ancestors?” he moaned.

  “Tell you what. I’ll give you privacy if you’ll give me fifty-three million.”

  The man laughed. “Do I look like I’ve got fifty-three million?”

  “I guess not,” Raymond said, eying the holes in the man’s fake Guess T-shirt. “You’ll have to put up with me then, won’t you?”

  The man shook his head in resignation. He tossed a cigarette in the air and caught it with his mouth, perhaps in an effort to impress Raymond. He lit it with a cheap plastic lighter and tipped the flame to an incense stick in a holder, then closed his eyes and joined his palms, cigarette clenched between his lips.

  After he finished praying, he removed half a dozen mandarins from a cloth bag and placed them next to a rice bowl.

  “My father appeared in my dreams yesterday. He said he hadn’t eaten for days,” the man explained.

  “If it were my father, I’d let him starve. A real asshole.” Raymond snorted. “He’s still alive. If he died, my mother might come and live with me.”

  The man ignored Raymond’s comment and produced an open biscuit tin from his bag. He arranged a small paper house and car in the tin, the tip of his tongue sticking out between his lips, like a little girl playing with a dollhouse.