Like a Boss (34 page)

The crowbar wavered. “Ms Mehta?”

I snatched the crowbar from his hands and took a fighting stance: one foot in front of the other, the crowbar up and ready. “If you’re going to threaten someone with that, you have to use it the right way. Hold it by the straight end, aim the hooked end at whoever you want to scare. That’s the part that hurts. Got it?”

He nodded, though the terrified look on his face never left. I handed him the crowbar and gave him a pat on the back. “Work on it, kid. Who’s up in the office?”

“Mr Ramaddy. He hasn’t left, really, ever since you showed up.” He squinted. “What happened to you?”

“You know, a little hostile negotiating with management.” I dusted off my trousers, leaving streaks of sweaty mud behind. “Why aren’t you hiding, too?”

He swallowed hard. “Someone has to protect the street. There’s all kinds of bad things going on.”

“True, but all of them are in
here
.” I turned him around so he faced the city. “It might be a good idea for you to go home. Keep away from any tuk-tuks.”

“But my job is here–”

“And it’s not worth you getting killed over,” I said. “By the powers invested in me by my distillery, I hereby relieve you.”

“You sure?”

I patted his shoulder. “As sure as I can be.”

Todd sagged and handed me the crowbar. “Thank you.” He looked at the ruined barricade. “I can work on that before I–”

“Go.”

He went. I waited until he was out of sight before approaching the Co-Op Building.

All the furniture had been shoved against the windows. The ridiculous couches and uncomfortable office chairs made an even worse barricade than the one Todd had built. Through the gaps I could see someone walking through the lobby. A giant shadow loomed on the lobby wall, made cancerous by the green chemical lights inside. The steel doors were locked tight, so I banged on them as loud as I could with the crowbar. “Vikram!”

The shadow stopped moving. I banged again. “It’s Padma! Open up, Vikram! I want to talk business!”

Shuffling feet approached the window. Someone moved a set of chairs aside, and there was Vikram, his beard now devoid of henna. His face looked hollow, and his eyes had sunk even further into his skull. “Business? I know of no such thing.”

“I want to sell my distillery.”

His eyes drifted toward mine and came into focus. He straightened up. “Padma?”

“That’s who I said I was.”

“And you want to sell–”

“The Old Windswept distillery, yes.”

He blinked. “To me?”

I rapped on the window pane, and he jerked back. “Do you have three million yuan?”

“Well, not
personally
…”

I held up the crowbar. “Seven days ago, you tried to snatch my distillery from under me. Now I’m here to sell it, and I’m not in the mood to dick around. Open up, or I’m opening up for you.”

Vikram muttered something about the repairs coming out of my dues, but he moved toward the door. I heard him grunting and furniture scraping for a few minutes. The steel doors unlocked and creaked open. “No power,” said Vikram, standing aside. “So the mechanisms don’t work.”

“They will in a few hours,” I said, squeezing into the lobby and wishing I hadn’t. Vikram had dropped glow sticks on the floor, making them into a small circle around a smoldering trash can fire. Empty rum bottles formed arcane patterns around the glow sticks. “Have you been in here the whole time?”

Vikram nodded, his face ghoulish in the chemical light. His guyabara was limp, and sweat stains darkened its armpits. “It’s not safe out there, Padma. You know what they say about civilization being two meals away from anarchy. Once the shops ran out of food–”

“They didn’t,” I said. “People just
thought
there was a shortage. There’s plenty to eat.”

“Huh.” He scratched his beard, his hand disappearing into its depths. “Of course, if the Public had been up–”

“It is,” I said, stepping over the bottles. “Letty’s just yanked our access.”

“She do the same with the sun? Because the rooftop PVs don’t do anything anymore.”

“The inverters are tied into the Public, so she probably did something to them, too. There
is
power.”

“And food?”

I nodded. “If you come out with me, I’ll show you.”

He laughed, though it sounded more like a cackle. “That’s a good one. Go outside. No, not when Union and Freeborn are blowing each other up. I saw the explosions. It’s a war zone outside.”

“It’s Letty again.”

His smile faded. “Why would she do that? Blow up her own city?”

“Because she’s wanted to burn us to the ground for fifteen years. She’s just finishing the job.”

“That makes no sense.”

“None of it does, yet here we are. Doing business. Can we get to it?”

Vikram twirled his beard as he stared at the fire. “You’re serious?”

“Like a heart attack. I believe you said the offer was around three million.”

He stopped fiddling with his beard. “That was a week ago.”

“So? It’s not like the yuan’s collapsed.”

“But the Co-Op has!” Vikram clamped his hands over his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he said through his fingers. “I shouldn’t shout. Stressful situations are the worst time to shout.”

“I’d shout if I were in your shoes,” I said, pulling a chair off the window barricades. It looked like one I’d helped steal from Thronehill. A whole week of this bullshit, and I just realized there hadn’t been a response from the WalWa compound. How had Letty dealt with them?

Vikram let his hands slip down his face. “All the members of the Co-Op voted to disband, because no one wanted to help look out for each other. People who’d bought shares in the mutual fund wanted to cash in, and the way the fund was structured, the payments had to come out of the pockets of the owners.”

“That’s insane.”

“Well, that’s what we get for not reading the fine print.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? It’s your
job
to read the fine print. You and Elisheba and the rest were supposed to look out for us.”

“We did! We were going to make you all so much money! I mean” – he laughed, his eyes growing wet – “it was perfect. We had so much rum to sell, so much cane to distill, and it was all just
sitting there
, not earning any money.”

“You know, it’s been a while since I took micro-econ, but I’m pretty sure that we earned money by selling the actual rum, not hypothetical future rum.”

“But it wasn’t
enough
.”

“It was enough for me.”

“Yeah.” He chewed his lower lip. “It was enough for Estella, too. She said the whole idea was nonsense, and she wouldn’t have anything to do with it.”

I smiled. Once again, Madame Tonggow’s wisdom had temporarily won the day. “So, what happened?”

He shrugged. “The owners were furious. They demanded a vote. They took it. I objected because our by-laws say that a vote to dissolve has to be done by all the owners, and it has to be unanimous.”

“It wasn’t?”

He made a face. “Well,
you
weren’t here.”

“And those fuckers voted anyway?”

Vikram held up his hands. “It all came apart so fast I didn’t have time to think of a way to stop it.”

“What? When did this happen?”

“Two days ago.”

I pulled down a second chair. “I didn’t hear anything about this.”

“That’s because we thought you were dead.”

I wait a moment before dropping the chair. “What!”

He nodded as he sank into the chair. “You’d been blown up in a bombing. Or cut down by a gang of machete-wielding Freeborn. Or you’d hijacked a freighter and piloted it into the sun.”

“And you didn’t think to check? Like, have someone run to Terminal Island and call up the anchor and ask, ’Hi, has Padma Mehta stolen a freighter?’“

“No, because everyone wanted you
out
. They never trusted you, Padma, no matter that Estella had vouched for you. ‘I’ve built this distillery with my own hands, and I’m not going to let someone who got their distillery through legal tricks stop me from protecting me and mine.’ Crap like that. They voted, then ran off to bar the doors and hide.”

I lowered myself into a chair. “God, what a bunch of assholes. The minute they get a bigger piece of the pie, they just don’t care.” I snorted. “Not that I can point fingers.”

“I don’t recall you leaving your Slot.”

“Because I was stupid,” I said. “I should have told the Union to go to hell and stayed in Tanque for the rest of my life.”

“That’s not you.”

“Yeah? And just what do you know about me, Vikram? Have we ever talked outside of Co-Op meetings? Have I ever invited you out for tacos? Have you ever asked me home to meet your family? And why the hell aren’t you with them right now?”

“They’re safe, with my parents, way out in North Key.” He smiled. “The fact that you know I have a family says that, at least, you pay attention.”

“That’s just good business.”

“No, good business is not giving a damn about anything but the bottom line.” He tapped his cheek. “That’s what I learned at MacDonald Heavy. Keep it in the black. Doesn’t matter who gets hurt or killed along the way, as long as you keep the numbers in the black. The third-best decision I ever made was Breaching. Getting to say good riddance to all that bullshit saved my soul.”

“Only the third best? What were the other two?”

He laughed. “Second best was asking Ojana out for coffee.” He looked at the coral steel band on his left hand. “And the first best was coming here instead of Collai Prime.”

“Collai Prime is a beautiful place.”

“But it isn’t
this
place. The Union has a strong presence there, but it doesn’t run the planet. And all they grow is industrial, which means they’re completely locked into the whims of the Big Three’s evil brains. Rum isn’t much to start an industrial base, but it gives us a tiny sliver of independence.” He sighed. “Except when it doesn’t.”

“It could have, if we hadn’t gotten tied up with Letty’s plans.”

Vikram stroked his beard. “She drove a hard bargain. Those two women she sends to do her dirty work… they terrified us. Just sat in the corners and stared, like reef eels daring you to get too close.”

“She killed them,” I said, and my throat tightened up. “Holy shit, Vikram, she shot the two of them just a few hours ago.”

He leaned forward. “What?”

I told him of my adventures over the past few days, making sure to emphasize Letty’s problems with fire. By the end of the story, Vikram was the picture of angry sobriety. He stood up.

“You okay?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I am most definitely not.” He stepped over the mandala of bottles and made for the stairs.

“What are you doing?”

“I have some important papers for you to sign, so come along please.”

I followed him to his office. It was slightly less of a disaster area than the lobby, but not by much. A week’s worth of laundry hung from the ceiling, and empty canning jars lay about the floor. The only thing untouched was the filing cabinet. It looked like a monument to bureaucracy, standing proud in the middle of chaos. Vikram spat in the lock and slid a drawer open. He wore a mad grin as his fingers danced through the forms. “Yes!” he cried, holding one aloft. “Eight twenty-six stroke B, ‘Abandonment of Co-Operative Membership Prior to Title of Transfer.’” He cleared a space on his desk and started writing on it.

“That sounds downright poetic,” I said, reading over his shoulder.

“I’m assuming that you want to get as much money as possible for your distillery while giving the Co-Op the finger, yes?”

“There’s a form just for that?”

“There is.” His smile grew as he wrote. “This means that you are withdrawing from the Co-Op, and that you are due any moneys owed to you. As you weren’t a part of the Mutual Fund, you’re exempt from paying out shares. You’re also entitled to certain administrative damages thanks to the other members voting to dissolve without you.” He looked up. “Everyone has to work together. If some members want to stick it out, and everyone leaves anyway, they need to pay back whatever the dissenting members have sunk into the Co-Op. Dues help everyone, even if no one takes the help.”

I smiled back as what he said sunk in. “In other words, by paying dues but not giving a shit, I’m actually going to come out ahead?”

“Better than that, you can call up another vote about dissolution. In fact, you have to, because it’s the only way that the other members can hang onto their money.” He tapped the form with his pen. “This was built into the Co-Op’s DNA. Work together, or pay separately.”

I thought for a moment. “Is there a way to make sure that no one can buy controlling shares of Old Windswept?”

“Indeed there is.” Vikram pulled another sheet out of the filing cabinet. “Four sixty-four stroke C, ‘Disbursement of Shares Pending Transfer of Title.’” He scribbled on this one. “You can’t stop people from buying shares, but you can limit how many each buyer can buy. Of course, the other members might collude, but–”

“Considering how they’re so bad at playing together now, I can’t see them shaping up any time soon. Where do I sign?”

Vikram pointed at the six spaces on each form that needed my signature. I held the pen over the first line and froze. “Twelve years ago, right after Hurricane Paik, some asshole had looted my shitty little flat in Partridge Hutong. The only important thing I had in there was a bottle of Old Windswept. I didn’t want to be caught unawares like that again, so I went to the distillery and bought a case. It ate up all my savings.

“I’d never met Tonggow until I went out there to make the pickup. I’d taken the bus, then walked, ’cause I was so damn broke. It was a hot day, so I was this sweaty, dirty mess when I got to the distillery. Tonggow met me at the front door and gave me a glass of heavy mint tea. She was done up like a society grande dame – pearl earrings, hair permed – but she also wore work boots and a coverall. Didn’t say a word about my appearance. Just asked about work and how long I’d been on Santee and how I liked to drink my rum.” I laughed. “I just said I took it neat, a little finger at the end of the day. When I started walking down the road with the case, she made her foreman give me a lift back to town.”