Read Online Yellowthread Street by William Marshall - Free Book Online Page B

festive. Mr Boon had come down from the hill and he never felt festive. Tonight he was downright peeved. Mr Boon looked at Alice. Alice sat opposite him in a wheelchair with her ear wrapped in a space helmet bandage. Mr Boon sucked his hollow tooth and felt peeved. He sucked his hollow tooth again. Mr Boon turned his head to another angle and looked at Alice out of the corner of his eye and sucked his hollow tooth.
    ‘All my friends,’ Alice said sentimentally. The men from Hanford Hill, their bodyguards, their employees and Alice sat in a circle in the middle of the cleared dance floor and ashed their cigarettes into a centrally placed brass spittoon; ‘My dear old friends,’ Alice said and wiped a jelly tear from her mummy-wrapped cheek. ‘My dear, dear old friends,’ Alice said.
    Mr Boon moved his head and contemplated Alice from under hooded lids. ‘Quiet, woman,’ Mr Boon said.
    ‘Yes, Mr Boon,’ Alice said.
    Mr Boon sucked his hollow tooth again. Mr Boon was in his late fifties, fat and well oiled, well preserved and looked after; he had an almost full set of gold-filled dentures, but he had a hollow tooth. He sucked it.
    ‘Mongolian,’ Mr Boon said, ‘Mongolian.’
    ‘Independent,’ Hernando Haw from Macao said. He curled his lip, ‘Independent.’
    ‘Hmm,’ Mr Boon said. He blew a pollution of smoke into the circle like the Queen Elizabeth with its boilers shut down. Outside the circle, against the walls, the whores stood at various points of the compass watching the men and the smoke and the toothsucking like a scene from
The Hustler.
‘Low Fat?’ Mr Boon said.
    ‘Independent operator,’ Low Fat said. He shook his head. ‘Independent.’
    ‘Stupid,’ Mr Boon said.
    ‘Stupid,’ Hernando Haw from Macao agreed.
    Low Fat bobbed his head up and down. ‘Stupid.’
    Mr Boon surveyed the antidotes to stupidity in his dance hall pharmacy. He looked at Shotgun Sen. He looked at The Club (With Nails). He looked at Osaka Onuki the Disemboweller. He looked at Crushed Toes and the other one (no one knew his name—he was The Fourth Gangster) and he thought them a potent bunch.
    ‘Stupid,’ Mr Boon said. He waved his hand in deep pity for someone so stupid. ‘So, so sad, sad stupid.’
    ‘Stupid!’ Mr Boon said.
‘Stupid!’
    Mr Haw from Macao nodded, Low Fat nodded, Alice nodded, the henchmen nodded, Osaka Onuki the Disemboweller ran his thumb along the hone of the short sword under his coat and he nodded. Apricot Tang Lee shot a thrilled look at Posey Yin and Tinkerbell Lin Wong and she nodded.
    Alice said, ‘Stupid.’
    Mr Boon turned his attention to Osaku Onuki. He considered the little Japanese’s squat body and the ripple of his shoulders and forearms under his little squat Japanese suit. Osaka Onuki giggled and touched at his short sword.
    ‘Kukri,’ Mr Boon said, ‘Indian Gurkha knife one foot long, very sharp.’
    Osaka Onuki the Disemboweller giggled. Mr Boon turned his eyes on to Shotgun Sen. The twin barrels of Sen’s sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun under his left armpit down to his trouser belt made him look like a fat frog with goitre. Shotgun Sen patted the outline of the twin barrels. Crushed Toes said nothing. He tapped the base of his chair with a fast rhythmic tapping and waited for Mr Boon to give the word. The Fourth Gangster crossed his arms and touched at the two pistols in shoulder holsters he wore, one under each armpit, and made a kissing sound at the floor. Apricot Tang Lee felt a shiver of excitement run up her back and down into her underwear.
    ‘Warn, hurt, cripple, kill,’ Mr Haw from Macao said. They were the choices to be voted on, ‘Blind, amputate, scar, castrate.’
    ‘Kill!’ Alice said through her swathes of linen.
    Mr Boon thought about it. He sucked his hollow tooth in contemplation.
    Francis John Vinehouse, aged fifty, was the Hong Bay taxman. He went into the bar Feiffer had gone into earlier in the day and sat down. A stripper was in the process