If someone could have seen his face underneath his skull mask, they would have seen a contemptuous smirk.
Of course, right at that moment, no one could even see the skull mask. Red X was in stealth mode on the roof of the J.P. Sachs Bank Tower a mile away from the "Thank You Teen Titans!" ceremony at City Hall. He was killing a few minutes watching the ceremonies with an occasional glance over his shoulder in the other direction to keep track of what really counted.
He shook his head in disgust. These stupid things were always the same, weren't they? Naively adoring crowds. Cops in their dress blues. Banners. Signs sucking up to individual heroes. Oh no, wait. That's something different. He could see two guys with trombones and another with a big bass drum. Some woodwinds. A fricking band? They have a fricking band at this one?! Oh my god.
He both hated these things and loved them at the same time. He hated them because they were the cherry on top of the fraud sundae that was a typical big city police force and government. He loved them because while all the command structure of the Jump City Police Department was at a ceremony saluting the Teen Titans for saving their city, or some such bullshit, the pursuit of anyone committing a major robbery was handicapped by police captains not being present at police headquarters to coordinate a response.
At least, in Jump City, they were good enough to do these things in the late morning. This meshed perfectly with the Jump City Ballet's schedule, so X could do his barre work and take class in the morning and come back in the afternoon for rehearsals. As long as he could do the job without tripping any alarms, no one would know exactly when it had been pulled off and into what a tight window of his schedule he'd squeezed the robbery of this bank. No one would ever think it was the work of Xavier Li, guest artist and rising star of the Jump City Ballet.
He watched as the police now set up a cordon of officers around the podium and first the mayor and then the Teen Titans entered, the former to tepid applause, the latter to a huge ovation. X watched them closely. With just the press of his right glove fingertips in a particular sequence, index-index-ring-middle-index, the skull mask eye lenses switched to the ones for distance binocular vision. Even from the top of a 40 story glass tower a mile away it was like he was five feet away from them. He could see the slightest suppressed expressions on the "heroes" faces.
He hoped he would see something different this time, some recognition in their stupid little heads about what a giant fraud it all was. After a few minutes careful observation, though, he sighed with disappointment. It was the same as always. The little bat entered first and he somehow managed to walk as though simultaneously standing at attention, investing the stupid sham with a degree of solemnity it didn't deserve at all. Next was Cyborg looking uncomfortable as usual but all serious and proud, too. After him was Beast Boy. X almost felt sorry for him. He seemed to love being cheered but in a needy sort of way, not narcissistic. The next Titan to step forward was Raven. X chuckled. She openly rolled her eyes at the whole display.
"You go girl!" X muttered to himself.
Then was Starfire, who, like the little bat, had a desperately serious air about her as though a stupid, fake ceremony, pure public relations and nothing more, really meant something. X shook his head with a sudden, depressing thought.
Oh my god. Do they actually do shit like this on other planets, too? A black mood momentarily held him in its grip at the thought that complete bullshit might be an intergalactic phenomenon.
Last were Jinx and Kid Flash. She saw the cheering crowd and turned back to her flame haired husband. X grinned. Her expression had clearly said, "Can you believe this shit?" Dash had responded with a sort of half smile that meant, "I know, I know. Just . . play along."
Index-middle-ring-index-index. He went back to the normal lenses. He didn't need to see any more and started toward the opposite side of the roof of the 40 story glass tower. The two window washers, oblivious to his presence, were finally harnessed in and getting into the window cleaning lift. X knew they wouldn't see him with cloaking mode running. He just had to get quietly onto the mesh steel scaffolding without them noticing that Singapore's favorite son, a six foot one, 165 pound, fantastically conditioned, fantastically handsome guy in a skin tight black suit with a cape, a red x on the chest and a skull mask was on there with them.
Mission accomplished. He got on helped by the fact that the two were kibitzing back and forth about some stupid sports team. X shook his head. Why do guys give so much of their time to that garbage? The world cheats them blind while they worry about the batting average of some guy who doesn't know them and couldn't give a shit less about them.
X shook his head as the window washing rig started down. He realized how silly it was but he was still feeling a little irritated that the Titans were the same. The mechanical hum of the machine that slowly let the rig down by releasing metal cable at either side of it accompanied his thoughts along with the wind whipping past the edge of the glass tower. It was a crazy idea, anyway, that he could convince the Titans that his take on things was right and that they were wasting their time with small stuff a lot of the time and actually helping the worst people another part of the time.
Jinx could give that message an honest hearing. She knew what bullshit establishment labels were. Probably Kid Flash, too. He'd seen past her "villain" label to fall for her. But the others! Even Raven . . the whole thing about living a prophecy, that his research had turned up, seemed bad to X. You get too caught up in that "it is written" sort of shit and you're not liable to be flexible enough to consider that you're wrong.
X waited a few minutes while the window washing guys did their thing and slowly worked their way down the building. He needed for them to get down to at least the 35th floor. He had 25 floors worth of cable in the velcro harness on the underside of his cape. More than that had seemed to stress the cloaking. Too much mass and flecks of light weren't redirected. All of a sudden people would see glimpses of him and a coil of cable six inches thick.
A less adept thief might have gotten impatient at how slowly the window washers were doing their job, now just starting to squeegee the 39th floor windows. There was an art to this job, a feel for the timing and rhythm of it. Sometimes the most productive thing you could do was to remain absolutely still. Red X was an invisible statue while he bided his time. He'd wait till the window guys got down to 35 then attached the hooks to the underside of the scaffolding and go over the side and let himself down to the 10th. That's where the secret vault was, not the one everybody lining up to open a freaking checking account could see behind the tellers on the ground floor here at the huge bank's west coast headquarters. No, this vault was secret and it was where the target gold was.
X had been hesitant to take on a contract job like this even when it involved one of the giant banks he hated. But it had come from Park so at least he knew he wasn't going to get fucked from that angle. The client seemed safe, too. Very rich guy, said Park when he gave X the pitch amidst the blare of the North Jump Street Festival. The guy made his money in computers, mostly in Europe but also in China and Japan, said Park. He bought himself 200 pounds of gold because he didn't trust the system said Park. X had smiled. He liked this guy already.
But, Park explained, the guy had been skeptical but not skeptical enough. He'd had the gold stored at J.P. Sachs. Not some little local credit union but one of the couple biggest banks in the country. Too big to fail.
Too big to trust, too. It was one the most crooked banks in the country, which is saying something. The billionaire tried to withdraw it from that bank two months ago. Showed up with all the paper work and some guys in a truck waiting outside the bank. Annnnnd they had stiffed him. A fucking billionaire and they stiffed him. Oh, so sorry Mr. So and So. But as you can see if you read section 47 point 3 point 2 of our contract we are entitled to settle you in cash if conditions force us to. We're so sorry but we're going to pay you in cash. The guy had gone nuts right there in their headquarters. How the fuck can you not just take it out of the vault and give it to me? It's mine! You're just supposed to be holding it for me! What did I pay you those storage fees for, huh?! You thieves!
All of this was at a high decibel level, calling them thieves amidst the expensive italian leather decor straight out of the Poliform catalog and in front of a crowd of onlookers, still got him none of his gold. Him, a billionaire and they stiffed him! Park told X they gave him a check for the cash value of his gold, $3.5 million and brought two cops into the office to "escort" him out.
Now the guy went into quiet furious mode, said Park. The guy hadn't inherited his money. He was a self made billionaire. The scene in the bank had been a stray relic from his days as a normal guy. Billionaires, Park explained, didn't make scenes. Scenes were for getting what you wanted when all you could do was embarrass someone. Billionaires just got want they wanted. He wanted his gold. He didn't want a fucking check. The whole point of buying gold was to have something real that wasn't just a piece of paper that promised that someone would give you some other pieces of paper which were also just promises. And maybe eventually you could trade one of these hopefully kept promises for something real. Gold is real. And if economies crash gold will go through the roof in value.
The billionaire had waited a few months then he'd talked to the baddest motherfucker he knew who discreetly put him in touch with Germany's version of Park. This guy had told him it couldn't be done. But, he wanted to do business with the billionaire in the future. To mollify him he told him he'd contact "another guy I know", meaning Park. He'd given Park an intro to the whole thing on the order of "Look, I know you're gonna tell me 'no' but I have to ask so . . . " And there had been a component of "I know this is in Jump City and your base is east Asia . . but . . "
Park had paused as long as he possibly could then told him that he knew a guy, a very special guy, who might be able to do it. Messages went discreetly back and forth and when the billionaire spoke at a trade show in Shanghai, he sat down with Park in a darkened movie theater a few blocks from the trade show while a very chop socky kung fu film played on the screen in front of them. The billionaire and Park missed all the subtle subtext of the rags to riches action film as they discussed business.
Jobs like this were exactly what you normally didn't do, Park explained. Normally, you looked for a weak defense around something valuable. You tried to find a jewelry wholesaler with an alarm that could be beat, an importer who cut corners to save money and didn't properly segregate the really valuable stuff, something like that. You didn't try to hit a place whether it was weak or not. Park's sagely counsel of the nature of smart thieving made no impression. The billionaire wanted this place hit, period. He gave Park information. It was very good information. He and Park agreed on tentative terms but Park told him that nothing was final if his special guy didn't take the job.
Park flew from Shanghai to Jump City. He never spoke to X except in person and in the right sort of locations. He would get his attention one way or another and set a meeting in a smart location. Park showed up at the next performance of the Jump City Ballet in a white suit with a bright red tie in the middle of the 5th row from the stage. X was on stage as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet. He saw Park out of the corner of his eye just before dramatically stabbing the wimpy blond guy dancing the role of Mercutio. A minute later, red tights clad X fell to the stage, killed by Romeo, another wimpy guy who couldn't have beaten X in a fight if X was barehanded and the guy had an Uzi. Staring dead eyed out toward the audience, X could see a flyer for a street festival in the north end of Jump City in Park's hand and that Park had seven fingers showing against the background of the flyer. X nodded slightly as the curtain for that act came down.
Early the next evening, Xavier Li walked from his apartment building a circuitous route to the street festival a few blocks north. It was the noisy version of such things with a band, a roving trumpet player, jugglers, a guy on stilts, craft displays off to one side and some carnival games on the other. The street was not quite packed but most of the way there. X knew that his job was to just walk right through the middle of it till Park saw him from wherever he was. Then Park would, literally bump into him and they'd go off to some fringe of the proceedings and talk.
Just as he got to one end of the festival, X felt a hand at his back. "Oh, sorry," said the familiar voice. X walked off in one direction past a fortune teller's tent. Park, followed, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, just another shlub, and laid it all out beside the brightly colored tent as calliope music suddenly blared from just the other side of the tent filling the noise deficit from the band taking a break. As usual, X listened very carefully but also peppered Park with questions. Plans? Security? Timing? How do we know that the gold is there? Escape routes?
It turned out the billionaire had gotten the german version of Park to hack J.P. Sachs. Internal memos showed that they had stiffed the guy in order to use his gold to live up to a contract for the sale of gold to China. A Chinese consortium was irate that they had not already gotten gold for which they'd paid J.P. Sachs. And, the bank's internal correspondence showed there should be more gold. Maybe another 100 pounds of gold that was supposed to go to Shanghai along with the billionaire's gold. Park was supplying X with plans of the place, documents on timing, the layout of this 10th floor vault and more. The billionaire wanted his 200 pounds of gold. He'd pay $5 million in cash to Park and he didn't care what other gold got taken. Hell, he wanted more gold to be taken. Let those crook motherfuckers at J.P. Sachs squirm, Park told X he'd said.
X was silent for a long time. Park expected it. X never said yes right away to any job.
"The weight's a problem," he finally muttered. "Maybe to a guy who doesn't even weigh 150 pounds," he said, giving Park a playful swat on one shoulder, "I look pretty heavy but I don't weigh much more than you. 200 extra pounds is a lot of weight to me. And it's some bulk, all those 100 ounce bars. And anything more than that, the necessary icing on the cake for this job, just pushes it further into being a problem. Let me look at it and get back to you."
Park had nodded as solemnly as he could. It was all he could do to avoid a grin and a fist pump. He knew X. If X said it was impossible, that meant he would do it but that it would be tough. For X to only say 'Let me look at it and get back to you' was practically a victory dance in advance.
The next morning, Park drifted down to the front desk of the four star hotel where he was staying and asked if there were any messages for him. The guy behind the counter said that Park's tickets had arrived. He handed Park an envelope with the logo of Jump City Tickets. There was only one ticket in it, to that afternoon's baseball game at Jump Stadium. Park, dressed casually again, showed up just before the start of the game. The stands were only half full and there was no one within 10 seats of Park and X in the upper deck of the stands.
X agreed to do the job but, reading from 10 pages of handwritten notes he'd made the night before, he outlined in excruciating detail all of the problems in this one over the first hour of the baseball game. Park expected this too. This was pure X. He thought everything through. Park knew he had to just sit and listen. That was fine. Even this kind of conversation with X was fun for Park.
It was always fun for Park to deal with X.
X was one of the few people Park interacted with as an equal. It was a refreshing break from guys being so deferential to him. It was odd to say about a guy that he saw just three or four times a year but X was probably his best friend. He didn't click with anyone like with X. He was sure that he and X would have become pals no matter how they had encountered each other.
For each of them, the other other was a unique safety valve. There was no one else with whom X could talk about this stuff. People below you were targets for law enforcement to flip to get at you. People above you pretty much weren't. Only Park was sort of above X.
Park was barely older than X and had inherited his father's criminal empire involving finance, gambling, international smuggling and the fencing of rare and high end goods covering South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, Viet Nam, Thailand, Myanmar, India, Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore. They did legal things, too, when it paid well enough.
There had been a year or two, after Park's dad had died, where various parties, who had always wanted to challenge Park's dad, wouldn't give Park his due respect. Maybe they thought they would move in on the business. Maybe they thought slender, baby faced Park wouldn't be up to running his dad's empire. Maybe they thought of him as just the kid in the suit always sitting in the corner while they talked to Park's dad. After a couple years, everyone realized that Park had learned everything his dad had known and that however young he was and looked, Park was not to be fucked with. None of the various parties were left after two years. Everyone else drew the appropriate inference about challenging Park.
X knew that no law enforcement agency in any country was ever going to go after Park. He paid the requisite graft and bought off the requisite number of cops. Interpol? Hell, Park had showed him the pictures of the guys in Interpol who were on his organization's payroll. The ones with the gambling problems had been especially easy. And even if some rogue honest cop dreamed of making such a bust he sure as hell wasn't going to try to flip Park to get to Red X. Talking to Park was perfectly safe.
For his part, Park knew where X was coming from. They'd had long talks when X was just some school kid in Singapore who kept amazing the organization by somehow getting his hands on extremely valuable stuff. His dad and the Singapore branch of his organization all got a kick out of X. They called him "Singapore pretty boy" for obvious reasons and could never figure out how he got the stuff he got. Diamonds, gold, platinum, a rare painting. The kid would come into their office wearing his fricking schoolboy uniform and put stuff on the desk that the most experienced freelance thieves they knew couldn't get.
At first, to X, Park was just a kid in an expensive suit sitting in the corner while X transacted business with his dad. He and Park would glance at each other during these negotiating sessions, X trying to get as much as possible from Park's dad for some diamonds or a painting or bars of platinum or gold. Park's dad normally wouldn't deal directly with a thief. But X intrigued him. There was something different about him. He had class. Park's dad saw X as the future. And X negotiated hard. Too many people were afraid of him. It bored him. This skinny kid from Singapore didn't back off at all. He'd start walking out three times in a negotiation if he had to in order to get his price.
In the course of these multiple negotiating sessions X would glance at Park a few times. His dad never introduced him to X. Not once. Customers didn't have a right to a scorecard of the organization's roster. For his part, Park would keep X in sight the whole time, patiently watching him, assessing him. After X left, Park's dad would quiz him. Did you notice he said this? What should you infer from that, and so on. Park's dad was always trying to hone his boy's skills.
Eventually, X and Park developed a sort of wordless proto-friendship. They knew each other on sight. They somehow had a degree of trust of each other even though not a single syllable had ever passed between them. They would nod to each other.
Finally, after selling a briefcase full of platinum bars taken from a police commander, plunder the cop taken from some crooks, and waiting for Park's dad and two of his flunkeys to test them, X had walked around to the side of his desk and extended his hand.
"I'm X," he said over his outstretched hand.
"I'm Park," said the Korean kid in the super expensive light gray suit rising to stand almost as tall as X and even skinnier. "And you're Xavier Li. You live at 2207 Sims Avenue in the Geylang district of Singapore with your mother."
The flunkeys, watching over their shoulders, guffawed.
Park continued, "That's just to point out to you that we know something about you. We know you're not just 'X'."
X smiled. "Everyone calls me 'X'. I didn't say that just to hide my identity from you. And you live at 132 Zhongyong 1st Road in the Shilin district of Taipei City, Taiwan."
The flunkeys guffawed even louder and slapped the desk. "Dueling dossiers!" laughed one. The moment could have gone in any of several different directions but both boys broke into grins. They shook hands again with a little more vigor. Luckily, Park's dad also laughed.
"Come on," said Park grabbing X by the arm and heading for the door. "We're going to have a business meeting, Dad," he said over his shoulder as the two walked out of the office and Park led them past the guards at the building entrance across the parking lot to a shiny silver Mercedes convertible."
X noted the obvious spring in this guy's step as he realized that, till now, he'd never seen him do anything but sit in that chair in the corner.
A thought suddenly occurred to X as they buckled in. "Are you old enough to drive?"
Park pulled away from the curb and zoomed down a boulevard toward the center of Singapore using every bit of the high end car's power. "I'm driving," he chuckled, "So, it looks like I'm old enough."
X chuckled too. Who was going to stop him, anyway?
"So . . . where are you going with all this?" asked Park as the wind whipped past them under starlit skies while they sped around other vehicles. Steamy Singapore could be quite nice at night with a breeze.
"How do you mean that?"
"Well, we find, my dad and I, that most thieves have no big picture plan at all. None. They're very myopic, very short term oriented. And . . its part of how they get caught. We avoid association with most of them. You can read it on them right away. My dad and I seldom talk to them ourselves. Most of 'em have never seen us, only the other two guys you saw in the office. You're kind of an exception."
There was a long pause as Park whipped the wheel around to the right getting through a light just before it turned red and then zooming ahead of some more cars before pulling up in front of Les Amis, a very expensive restaurant X had only heard about, on Orchard Road. Park braked hard, the car almost skidding to the curb then flipped the keys to a valet as he bounded out of the car and jogged to the entrance. X just followed behind him. He realized he didn't know just what this world of wealth and privilege was like so he decided to just follow in this guy's wake and assume that everything he did was perfectly natural.
Park walked right in past the maitre d, glanced across the room and then veered to one side and took a seat at the bar. He ordered a bottle of champagne and a steak dinner from the menu in french. X said he'd have the same. He noticed that the waiters and bartender all seemed to recognize Park and with no small delight.
Park continued as if there had been no interruption. "We know that you don't spend your money. My dad really likes that. Shows long term vision. We're not sure where you have it. Don't worry, we wouldn't take it from you. But you haven't been spending it," he said as the sommelier arrived, pulled the cork and presented it to Park. The boy sniffed it, nodded and the man poured two glasses of champagne. "You wouldn't believe the fucked up idiots our organization sees and we're at the top of the food chain!" he chuckled then took a gulp of champagne. "Somebody pulls an intricate job and then he spends the dough like he's actually trying to get caught."
Park stood up and waved one hand over his head, "Oh, police! Here I am!"
X chuckled. "What am I gonna do with it right now, anyway? I'm 14."
Park smiled and took a gulp of wine. "Dry," he said holding it up. "I like it much better than brut. Why shouldn't champagne be sweet?"
X took a gulp. It was very good, almost impossibly better than that wine that Hao's parents served at special occasions."What's . . brut?"
Park smiled. "So there are things you don't know? That's reassuring. Anyway, brut is a gradation of champagne. The least sweet is brut. The next least sweet is extra dry then dry then demi-sec then sec. They try to tell everybody that you're not sophisticated unless you like the least sweet champagne, the brut. Well, I know what I like and I don't care whether supposed experts say otherwise."
X took another gulp of his champagne. "I like it, too."
"I'll show you," said Park and he flagged down a waiter. "Have you already got a bottle of brut open?" he asked.
The waiter nodded.
"Please, get a glass for my friend here," he said gesturing to X.
When the waiter returned with another flute of champagne, X took a gulp. He made a bitter face. "That tastes like dishwater by comparison," he said putting the flute with the brut down on the bar and then pushing it as far away from him as possible.
Park laughed. "See! Don't listen to experts. Experts are just people consulted by lazy bastards who don't want to think for themselves. If you won't think for yourself you'll get taken by some guy who will. Hell, all the experts in our business would say that you shouldn't even exist. Fuck them!"
X laughed.
"And, all the experts in our business would say we should never trust you, that you're a rat for the cops."
X's eyes went wide. He shook his head. No. No way, man!
Park laughed as the waiter delivered their salads. "We already checked you out. Your own mom doesn't know you as well as we do," he said as he speared some greens and a shrimp and gobbled them up. " . . . I gotta tell you that the whole good boy at school thing had my dad's guy Wong worried. Invested in the system is how he put it. Fucking valedictorian of your class. I'm impressed."
X just shrugged as he dug into his salad.
"But we talked to that sad excuse for a leader of that gang you're kind of affiliated with. We got some info from him. We talked to the old man you apprentice under. And we talked to our guy in the Geylang precinct house. We even got footage of you whizzing on that cop's hat," said Park before breaking into laughter and then taking a couple bites from his salad.
"What?! How?"
Park finished chewing his food and swallowed. "Security camera for the construction company building that apartment complex that that 12 foot high fence surrounded. We're a silent partner in the real estate investment trust that owns it. There's always some pilfering of construction materials, maybe 1% but they had unusually high pilfering on that site so they kept the tapes to try and figure out who was doing it. We heard about you being chased by that cop and looked for it in the video. We finally found the footage of that cop chasing you. The way you jumped up that fence was pretty fucking impressive, man. And then to just, once you were on the other side of the fence, . . whip it out in broad daylight in front of him and piss on his hat," Park doubled over laughing and clapping, "that was great!"
X only smiled. "I was pretty angry by that point. At our gang as much as at the cop. Tattoos didn't tell me that cop was some kind of distance running champion in his school days. They just said I had to steal his hat as an initiation."
Park smiled. "Gang membership is good at first but it always brings you down in the end." He speared a slice of tomato and another shrimp and hungrily devoured them. "You get the strength of all the other members but you're also vulnerable to all their weaknesses. Anyway. We did our homework on you. Even other kids from your school said, 'Oh yeah, X gets great grades but the teachers hate him and he hates them'. Not just one kid. Three different kids all the same message. They hate X. X hates them. We have the clamps on one of your teachers. He's a gambling addict. We asked him about you. Man, he does not like you," snickered Park. "He thinks you're the fucking devil or something. So, we were pretty confident that you weren't the type to be a snitch for the cops."
"But you checked in with your guy in the Geylang precinct house after the first time I met with you and your dad to see if they suddenly had new information on you just to be sure, right?"
Park nodded through more laughter and speared some more greens from his salad. "Of course! We don't stay where we are by not using our resources." As X watched, Park waved for the Maitre d to approach them. "Is the booth in the corner free now?"
The Maitre d bowed and scraped. Of course sir. Yes sir. We would have gotten one for you when you came in if you'd just asked.
X saw that Park was accustomed to these shows of deference but he wasn't a jerk about them. He didn't humiliate anyone or wallow in his own importance. He patted the maitre d on the shoulder. "I know, Paul. But I wanted the navy leather booth in the corner so that my friend and I could discuss business in private."
"It's free now, sir. It's yours."
"Thank you," said Park and he deftly slipped a 100 singapore dollar bill into the maitre d's hand so smoothly that you wouldn't have seen it unless you were looking for it. Park picked up the champagne bottle and his glass and waved for X to follow him. As they were walking to the back of the restaurant, their entrees were coming out of the kitchen. With just Park's glance at the waiter he turned and followed them to their booth.
Both slender boys dug into their meals with gusto and there was little talk for the next few minutes beyond small talk about the meals. X asked a few questions about the Singapore police. Park described them as having a pretty much standard level of corruption. Taipei's cops are pure corruption, said Park. One hundred percent on the take, he laughed. All Taiwan was like that he said, just waiting to be bent. Seoul's cops were pretty fricking straight by comparison. Hong Kong's were a little more malleable than Singapore's. Macau in China and Chennai and some of the other cities in India are almost as bad as Taipei. He went on to grade the overall corruption of all the big cities of southeast Asia for X, but eventually tired of the subject.
"So, how'd you know to come to us with your swag?" asked Park after a gulp of champagne to chase down more food.
"The old man," said X. "He said you guys might kick me out but that you'd never flip on me."
Park nodded his head at the compliment.
"So, tell me about your association with that old man. Our guys liked that. He had a big rep at one time, your old man, not a, you know, thug, tough guy rep, which, incidentally, you have a surprisingly big rep for given that you barely outweigh me, but a rep for being the indispensable guy, the guy who figured things out. Alarms, weapons, even legal shit. He once got one of the gang's guys out on a technicality that the gang's lawyer hadn't noticed. That gang," Park shook his head. "The-the membership before the ones there now, they let him down. Still they were better than that loser running it now. The dude with all the tattoos? You know why he's still there? You know why he's not in jail with Tam and Koh and the rest? Not because he turned rat or anything. He's out because the cops forgot to include him in the indictments because he's such a nothing!" Park shook his head contemptuously and ate a few more bites. "So, anyway, how did you come to be the old man's protege?"
"What's there to say? I could tell from the way they all talked about him that the old man knew a lot of stuff. I wanted to learn. So, I made myself useful to the old man in return for lessons. I-I knew I'd need a lot of lessons, all the lessons I could get."
"Mmm-hmm. Is that because of where you're going with all this?"
X nodded.
Park, sighed. The thieves who didn't have anything going on wanted to talk about themselves non stop. This guy didn't want to give you anything. Eating with his fork in one hand Park made a gesture with the other, his hand making circles in the air. Go on. Keep going. Let's hear it.
X hesitated then finally spoke. "I'm gonna hurt the people who can't be hurt."
Park looked him in the eye. X was dead serious. Park burst into laughter and clapped, not at a joke but the audacity. He patted X's shoulder. "I love you, man! Who the fuck would say something like that?! This is why you and me have to stick together," he said. "Me and my dad? We can be hurt. We're not high enough up in the food chain to where we can't be hurt. It wouldn't be easy but it could happen. But you want to hurt the people with a lot more money than us that police and governments all protect? The ones that have whole governments on the fucking dole? Is that what you want to do?"
X nodded without a trace of mirth in his face or eyes. "And the cops and government who protect them."
Park leaned back in the booth with a deep exhale thinking it through. His eyes went back and forth across the table processing explanations. "You're a-a vengeance guy, aren't you? That's it, isn't it? You're like Edmond Dantes and you're gonna go all Count of Monte Christo on these guys."
X gave a sort of half shrug as if to say, close enough. His eyes met Park's. For almost a minute Park said nothing, not laughing any more, not even smiling.
"Because of your dad, right?" he muttered.
X nodded. Park wanted him to explain further but X would not say a word more.
In a bit of good timing, the waiter came by at that moment to ask how things were and see if they wanted a dessert menu. Park assured him that everything was great and said they would. They spent the rest of the meal in small talk about their steaks and their desserts. Park taught X about what was in a mille-feuille and explained some more about champagnes and then when it was time to settle up laughed at X reaching for his wallet and left a sheaf of 100 Singapore dollar bills on the table.
Outside, the valet guy practically sprinted to Park's car and quickly brought it back. Another large bill passed into the valet's hand with a smoothness a magician couldn't have bettered as the keys passed into Park's. Park zoomed through the streets starting east toward the Geylang district of Singapore. X had to put a hand on his shoulder and half shout over the wind whipping around them. "Hey, man. I don't live with my mother any more. I'm with the Singapore Ballet School."
Park skidded to a halt in the breakdown lane of a boulevard leaving a skid mark path from the fast lane to the car.
"What?!"
"Last week. I got a scholarship. I live there now, at the ballet school, back over on Waterloo," he said, pointing over Park's shoulder in the direction of it.
"Seriously, dude? You?! Ballet?"
X nodded.
"I thought all those guys were, well . . . you know. I never got that vibe from you," said Park before hastily adding, "Hey, if you are that's-"
"I'm not," X chuckled. It's a way for me to get out of the gang and into Singapore high society."
Park nodded though his brow was still deeply furrowed.
"And I'm really good at it. I can really jump. I-"
"I saw that with how you went over that fence," said Park before pausing. "So . . you . . . wear the-the tights with the seam . . ?" Park lifted his butt off the driver's seat.
X sighed and nodded as Park laughed.
"Wow, dude. That's some serious commitment to a cover."
X laughed. "It's not just a cover. Like I said, I'm really good at it. I like it. And it's not so bad, always being surrounded by pretty girls in tights, too."
"I suppose," conceded Park.
"Anyways, at first it was the only way to be with this one beautiful girl. But, right away, I could see that it was a way to slingshot past the whole gang thing. The old man told me how the gang would bring me down if I stayed in it. But it would've been hard for me to stay on Sims Avenue and leave the gang. This works for that and it gets me into high society,too. I'm a fucking artiste now, Park" he laughed and Park guffawed along with him.
"Thief-artiste!" laughed Park before pulling a U turn and zooming over to Waterloo and coming to another skidding stop at the curb in front of the school. He and X shared another solemn handshake. No one had to say anything.
My man Park, chuckled X to himself.
Then he went over a few of the points in the ten pages of notes he'd discussed with Park as he edged toward the rail of the window washing rig. He removed the coiled cable and attached hooks to the underside of the rig. He glanced left and right. Neither window washer had reacted at all to the twin metallic sounds. He climbed over the rail of the rig and descended toward his target.