"Fuck your mothers! Does my Chu Family pay you to sit there and watch the show? Do you want your whole families starving to death in the streets tomorrow?" Chu Xiaoxin glanced at the drunken policeman, then turned back, sat down at his table, and roared.
At Chu Xiaoxin's words, four middle-aged men rose from tables farther back. All wore short work jackets and trousers, with gold chains around their necks and thumb rings on their hands.
These four middle-aged men were all leaders of Chao Yong Yi's underworld gang. One of them, Chan Ah-sap, was its chairman. Chao Yong Yi now had over four thousand members, all of whom earned their living working at Hong Kong's various piers thanks to business from the Chao Feng Chamber of Commerce. It could be said that the gang's more than two thousand members were effectively hired muscle kept by the chamber; without the chamber paying their wages on time, these dock laborers would starve to death.
That was why Chu Xiaoxin could speak to them as though giving orders to servants.
The four exchanged glances and stepped away from their tables together. Two of them immediately grabbed the policeman by his shirt and held him back. One said, "Officer, that's the son of Chairman Chu of the Chao Feng Chamber of Commerce. If you apologize and go back to your seat now, it's not too late."
"Chao Yong Yi's Chan Ah-sap?" The policeman drunkenly raised his head and sized up the middle-aged man who had spoken. "Are you fucking drunk? Let go! Do you want to spend a few days eating cold rice in a holding cell to cool your temper? If you don't let go, I'll send people to the piers to make trouble for you every day!"
"Officer..." Chan Ah-sap gave a rueful smile. "You're the one who's drunk. Young Master Chu isn't someone you can afford to offend. Of the Chao Feng people who came to Hong Kong, over ten thousand depend on the Chao Feng Chamber of Commerce for their livelihood. You..."
"Chan Ah-sap, did I tell you to step up and play peacemaker? Throw him out and break his legs!" Seeing the Chiu Chow Gang members actually holding the policeman back and trying to reason with him, Chu Xiaoxin urged them on with dissatisfaction.
Chan Ah-sap turned and smiled at Chu Xiaoxin. "Young Master Shun, laying hands on a cop is troublesome. If Chairman Chu hears about it..."
"A-Yao, do you dare walk over and reward that cop with a bottle of beer for me?" Chu Xiaoxin stopped looking at Chan Ah-sap and glanced instead at Song Tianyao, who stood beside him.
Song Tianyao picked up a bottle of beer from the table and strode over to the policeman. Without blinking, he reached out with his left hand and turned the man by the shoulder to face him. Then he swung the bottle of Carlsberg in his right hand and smashed it hard against the man's forehead!
The policeman had been facing Chan Ah-sap, telling him to let go. He hadn't expected someone to turn him around by the shoulder, and before he could see who it was, a bottle struck him on the head!
Beer streamed down with the blood pouring from the cuts the glass shards had made in his forehead. The policeman was tough, though. He reached for the pistol at his waist and roared, "Fuck your ancestors! You dare assault a policeman? I'll shoot you dead!"
"You'd better pray for yourself, Officer." Song Tianyao tossed aside what remained of the bottle, just its neck, smiled at him, and returned to the table.
What a joke. With four Chiu Chow Gang members surrounding this policeman, it would be a miracle if they still let him draw his gun.
The four middle-aged men pinned the policeman down so tightly he couldn't move. There had been other policemen at his table, and when they saw their companion struck on the head with a beer bottle, all four immediately stood up, drew their pistols, and came over, shouting, "Let him go! All of you, stand there with your hands on your heads!"
Chan Ah-sap looked toward Chu Xiaoxin, only to find that Chu Xiaoxin had stopped paying him any attention and was instead taking out a cigarette and offering it to the young man who had just struck the blow. Chan Ah-sap sighed inwardly. It seemed that, no matter what else he did, he could never please Young Master Shun more than that young man.
"Go get our men! We can't let the cops hurt Young Master Shun!" Chan Ah-sap said to one of his brothers beside him.
The man immediately ran outside, and a policeman turned and chased him toward the entrance.
Chan Ah-sap took the policeman's service pistol from his waist, pressed it against his head, and said to the other three policemen rushing over with their guns raised:
"Officers, I'm Chan Ah-sap of Chao Yong Yi. I hope you'll give me some face and treat tonight's incident as though it never happened."
"You say it never happened, and that makes it so? I'll take you back to the station and hear what you have to say there!" One policeman pointed his pistol at Chan Ah-sap and shouted.
Chan Ah-sap's expression changed. He was a respected big boss in the jianghu himself. Although he couldn't hold his head high before the son of a big boss like Chu Xiaoxin, he really didn't need to be too polite to a few lowly plainclothes policemen. Seeing that the man wouldn't give him face, Chan Ah-sap's expression changed, and he said fiercely:
"Fine! I'd like to see how you take me into the station to talk. In all my years on the streets, your sworn brother here has broken more policemen's legs than I can count. A few more won't make a difference. If you've got the guts, shoot. If you shoot now, my men will burn down the police station and your whole family tonight!"
Listening from the sofa, Song Tianyao nodded inwardly. Those were the kind of ruthless words a gang boss should say. In Hong Kong in the early 1950s, the police could bully plenty of poor people, but the one thing they couldn't afford was to offend the rich and gangsters. Compared with wealthy people and gang members, they were definitely the weaker party. Smuggling was booming at the time, and gangs had divided up territory at every pier. When someone offended these gang members who made their living at the docks, who knew how many times they had secretly thrown a couple of Molotov cocktails at a police station at night, or found out where a policeman lived and gone to his home to intimidate his family? Just last year, the newspapers had reported that more than a dozen gangsters wielding axes had chased and hacked at two policemen at Central Pier.
These gang members weren't afraid of the police; at most, the police would arrest the people who had committed the crime. What they feared were the big bosses who paid them from behind the scenes, because if a big boss got angry, the thousands or tens of thousands of people under the whole gang's banner would lose their livelihoods.
Just as the two sides were at a standstill, the nightclub's front doors were forcibly smashed open from outside. The policeman who had run out earlier in pursuit of Chan Ah-sap's brother fled back into the hall, covered in blood. Behind him, dozens of bare-chested, burly men carrying fruit knives or bamboo poles surged into the hall, bristling with murderous intent!
"Which blind cop dares make Young Master Chu lose face?!"
Chapter 12: Another Bottle to the Head