Bitcoin Clowns, page 18
part #3 of Master Shanghai Series
“Jong, you…” she looked like she wanted to punch my nose or claw my face out but decided that it was better not to make a scene and draw attention to herself at this moment.
“Well, who told you to leave me behind just like that? I was worried about you guys!” That was true.
“The Argentinian gang put a reward on Axe’s head. He can’t stay in Shanghai anymore. I need to get him out of the city. All of us need to get out of the city as a matter of fact. We’ll be safer in the country-side.”
“Where’s your car?”
“Over there!” I looked at the mess of cars knocked sideways by Simon’s car, and spotted an ancient mini-truck in the midst of cars that all looked like they were brand new (except a bit banged up just now to varying degrees) in typical Shanghainese fashion which meant a new car every year. There was no doubt that Paula was the owner of the decrepit mini-truck, sorry to be blunt.
It was madness. Not five minutes ago we just sorta caused probably the biggest serial collision off the year (the year just started, I know) and experienced a near-death experience (second-handedly, from Simon’s perspective) and now I had made up my mind to do something SO mad that it was akin to suicide.
I reared Jessie up and told Paula to bring the kid into the car first.
“Kelv!” I beckoned my best friend over whom I trusted to have my back no matter what. “Take care of Marv for me. I need to get these two out of here immediately.”
Kelvin seemed to realize immediately my motive behind it. He knew all about Triple X as well. “But how are you supposed to do this? The highway is closed.” He looked at the nearest side of the highway exit, and squinted at the police cars standing in a row.
“There,” I pointed with my chin towards an opening between two police cars that was left open for the ambulances to pass through.
“Drive my car,” Kelvin suggested.
“Nah…” I did not want to further implicate Kelvin into any trouble. He was surely gonna get some serious pickle already for having participated in a street race that ultimately caused the crash if any of the hundreds of traffic cameras on the streets were working as intended.
Just then, Paula came back to get me and I told her to do as we agreed.
“Marv, I need to go. I love you.” And that was all I could say to my girlfriend, because she would never have let me do what I was about to do if she knew what insane plan I had in mind.
Paula looped her arm around my neck, with some difficulty because of our height difference, and we walked off awkwardly towards the mini-truck.
“Hey!” Marv called after me. I swung my head left then right again to stop her from following me.
“What was that?” Marv turned to Kelvin, who immediately snapped into the role of an innocent onlooker and told Marvey not to worry, per my request. “What are you guys planning?!” I could hear her say to the speechless Kelvin. — Brother doesn’t tell on brother. That’s the number one rule.
I don’t know how else to describe what happened next except that it was fun. Nerve-racking, hair-raising, adrenaline-pumping fun.
The mini-truck only had a single row of seat and we tugged Jessie in between us two adults. After checking that we all had our seatbelts on, Paula, as planned, rest her hand behind my back. I turned on the ignition with the sourest expression I could manage for the traffic cameras to see, and zigzagged my way through all the cars in front of us, ignoring all the surprised and horrified looks of people running and screaming in a panic-fueled escapade.
I confessed that I had once looked up how to get past police roadblock in Grand Theft Auto Five on Youtube and got sucked into all the bottomless hole of GTA5 law-enforcement-cheat videos. I hope that viewing history did not count as proof for my secret wish to defy the law. — I was really, honestly, seriously only doing this because I was being held at gunpoint by one of the country most wanted criminals, the Lady Triple X, I promised.
Less than ten seconds since I had put my foot on the pedal, we were already off the highway. A bunch of cameras flashed as I swerved right to avoid colliding into the journalists’ vehicles that had camped behind the row of police cars. I supposed it would be very hard to deny that I was not a self-centered attention-grabber after this.
Yeeeeah baby! We’re going on the front-page news again!
Chapter 34: Twenty Thousand
“You’re good!” Paula was laughing and screaming in excitement as we dashed madly out of the city on the G92 heading West towards Hangzhou. She wanted to high-five me, but I was pretty sure we were not in the clear, so I ignored her and left her hanging. In the end the high-five became a slap on the face, a wonderfully congruous action that fit the story.
“Just sit tight,” I grunted. Unhappy that I got slapped after all that I had done, but happy that I didn’t spark a shootout and get killed in the process despite all that I had done. “We are just lucky that the police didn’t come after us, but I’m pretty sure they will send someone to catch us pretty soon.”
“Don’t worry.” Paula said with a smirk. “Axe will come meet us and we can all switch transport after dark. We have done this kind of thing a million times.” She pulled down the passenger side mirror and combed her hair.
I nodded without speaking a word, not really sure whether I wanted Jessie to hear our conversation or not, but I supposed it was too late to contemplate that question. Based on how calmly he behaved just now, almost as if we were just having a picnic in the park, I trusted Paula when she said that they had done something like this a million times before.
“Get off the highway here.” Paula had been navigating me with the GPS on her cell after communicating with Axe. Seeing the sign for a roadside rest-stop with diners and toilets, I got off the highway as instructed, looking as apprehensive as anyone would under threat of being blasted by a gun to their back for all the cameras to see.
The sun had completely gone down, and the only light blazing in the wintry night was our headlights and that from the rest-stop infrastructure, and little did I know I was already surrounded by men that had sneakily crept up next to us. A man wearing a black facial mask opened the door on Paula’s side and gave her a startle.
“Get off!” He said to her. She sized up the man in shock, only to realize that he had held out a gun and pointed it at her temple.
“Don’t shoot! Geeze!” Even the seasoned lady Triple X was holding her hand up right now, surrendering all her self-respect. “They’re not our people…” She murmured under her breath at me.
“They don’t look like the police either,” I whispered, now looking authentically apprehensive.
“Where did they come from?” She looked
“Stop stalling! Get out!” The man hissed. “You too!” He poked his head inside the car and said to me. The door on my side opened at the same time and someone also in mask grabbed me by the arm, looking every bit like a regular lackey with no line to say.
“Dad! Mom!” Jessie screamed, pulling on both of our arms as we were being led out of the car.
For the last couple of months, I had thought about it long and hard whether I was ever capable of being a good father to someone, be it Jessie, or kid of my own in the future. I was very sure that if I ever have a second chance, I wouldn’t let him out of my sight so easily ever again. That was the least of what a responsible father could do, I thought. And yet now as we were dragged apart, Jessie’s little hand holding on to my middle finger, my heart broke. I did not ever want to let go again, but I terribly needed my hand…
POWWW!
I punched the guy in the face so hard and so unexpectedly that he did not even have time to make a sound corresponding to the level of pain I felt he suffered. I definitely felt the sting of the punch on my knuckles. And nothing could be said about Paula’s exceptional reaction time. She stepped the guy with the gun on the toes and when he looked down instinctively, she clawed his face with her crazy ass long nails. The man screamed in horror and in his frenzy to get the black window-like Triple X off his face, he pushed her back into the car, just as we would have liked it. I put the truck in drive and torn away from the parking lot.
PEWWW!
Our car skid to the left as I heard one of our tires got hit. I grabbed the wheel with all the power in my arms to keep it steady.
“Your father-in-law is with us!” A man shouted from behind us. “Leave now and you’ll never see him again!” He fired another warning shot at the sky. The night sky grumbled angrily in reply.
I felt like I should have just driven off, irrespective of what the man said, but the terrible thing about a good hearing was that you heard everything, and when something entered your subconsciousness, you just couldn’t pretend you didn’t hear it and continued living life guilt-free. I eased the brakes of our shaking mini-truck and it came to a halt just in front of the entrance to the highway. Paula and Jessie looked imploringly at me, waiting for the man to make a decision that could decide their fates.
“Take the wheel,” I told Paula, who instantly climbed over to the driver’s side without any complaint. As I was sliding towards her side, I gave the kid a kiss on the forehead.
“Be a good kid.”
As I walked in the chilling semi-darkness towards the men alone, I contemplated the meaning of my life. It sounded really grand, and almost guaranteed a series of philosopher’s quotes from Plato to Carson Chang, but it took me less than a nanosecond to wrap up the thought. — In the past thirty or so years I had lived and breathed this cold, dry and PM 2.5 filled air of Shanghai, I didn’t have any special meaning or purpose in life. It was only at this dire moment that I realized I finally had a purpose in life, and that was to protect the people I love, with every last ounce of energy and last thread of wit left in me (when I was not busy trying not will myself from shitting my pants or internally ‘oh-my-God-what-did-I-do’-ing myself hoping that was the spell to restart life’s game.)
“What do you guys want?” In the sparsely lit parking lot, I asked the group of men in masks standing opposite to me. There were about seven or eight of them, and possibly more sitting in the cars behind them.
From inside the car, an unmistakably elderly man stepped out on uneven gait. I immediately recognized him to be Axe, faking old and frail once again, since we were so significantly outnumbered. The driver of the car turned on the spotlight then and I could see that Axe had been forced to kneel on the cold hard gravel next to a whining young man with a mop of curly hair. It was Dumbo, his worthless assistant.
In the blinding light, I saw one of the men in mask pulled out a long rifle from the back of the car, cocked it and pointed it at Dumbo.
“Don’t kill us!!” The poor guy started to kow-tow repeatedly to his invisible enemy that remained in the shadow. “Please don’t kill us! I still have a house full of mouths at home to feed. I can’t die just yet!”
The man with the rifle started to speak, but his voice was extremely unnatural. I could not confirm it with my eyes because it was so dark, but I was pretty sure he was using some sort of voice-transformer. “We know you have control of twenty thousand Bitcoins. Give them to us and your kin will be saved!”
I wanted to argue that neither of them was actually my kin, especially now that my fake marriage with Paula had been nullified but I thought it best to save my breath for other more important matters. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I screamed back, faking innocent. Of course I had control of a lot of Bitcoins but I wouldn’t go about flaunting it so quickly without getting more information, such as whether they would actually let us go alive if I do send them the coins.
“Stop acting! We know everything.” Another hostage was brought out from inside the car. It was a man whose face I did not immediately recognize from the distance, but his physique was unmistakable. It was the guy who gave me the private key to RX Club’s Bitcoin wallet, the guy who saved Marvey and me from the fire. I hated having to refer him as the guy who did so and so, just as I hated being called the guy who dated Li Kun’s daughter in public’s eyes, but after all these times, I still didn’t know his name.
“Tell Jong your name,” the man with the rifle demanded.
“I’m Cao, cousin!”
You will have to forgive me if I looked as if I hadn’t heard it, because at that moment, my mind totally blanked out.
My cousin Cao, my very own kid cousin Cao, the good-for-nothing insurance-selling, funds-peddling Cao, that was him? I did not believe it.
“Cao, tell your cousin what happened!”
“I’m really sorry Jong to have put you in this spot, but I have no choice. Please give them the piece of paper with the private key I left with you and we can then all go home.”
“Your beloved cousin Cao here,” the man in rifle started saying, “has stolen all the coins from our organization. In fact he has stolen more, as you’ve seen what he was capable of at Bilious. He was a man with credible skills, but not a very honest heart. Now our request is very simple and just. All we want is our Bitcoin back, and all of you can roam free, except for Cao, of course. What do you say?!”
Bearing the risk of being shot right then and there, I took a few steps forward without answering to his proposal. I wanted to take a better look at the guy who claimed to be my cousin. I knew I hadn’t seen Cao in many years, but I had encountered this man on so many different occasions and not once did his demeanor betrayed signs of old kinship.
“I don’t have the paper anymore. I thought it was garbage and threw it away!” I said. “In fact, I don’t have any money! My bank account balance is constantly in the reds and guess what, my dearest cousin Cao here just got my rich best friend’s PissCoin portfolio crashed to a new low. So basically,” I caught my breath and continued, “I have no money to offer you! Nothing at all!”
I raised my arms in the air and started to walk towards the group. Seeing this, Axe started to yell and Dumbo was whining ever louder, seeing how their only hope had decided to stop negotiating and went straight for hands and feet combat with eight rifle-carrying men.
“Don’t you dare walk any closer!” The guy warned.
“What would you do if I keep walking?” I said. I had nothing to lose now. I never had anything to lose except my own lousy life.
“Stop right there!” The guy yelled and pointed his gun barrel and me, still not firing.
Axe couldn’t hold it anymore I guess, seeing how foolish I was. He jumped to his feet, pulled Dumbo up and started swinging punches left and right at whoever was trying to subdue him. It was then I started to run and wedged myself in the middle of the brawl.
“Stop it, you guys!” I screamed, stretching out my arms to separate Axe and Dumbo from the men in mask. “What kind of games are you playing, Cao?!” Everyone turned to stare at the man who claimed to be him but only to find that I had my eyes on the leader of the gang. He had dropped his rifle and was leaning on the hood of his car now in astonishment. With one forceful pull, I unpeeled his facial mask to reveal his face. Now this was my cousin Cao.
“What’s all these nonsense?!” I asked Cao, who only shook his head with a satisfying smile, being caught in a middle of a prank by his older cousin.
“He’s your cousin? Then who’s that guy?” Flustered and confused, Axe pulled the fake Cao closer only to find that he was a rather tall and muscular guy with swarthy skin. This Chinese Dawyne Johnson could never have been my blood relation. The He family gene pool would not have allowed it, unfortunately.
“Come with me into the car, and I’ll tell you everything,” Cao finally said, packing up the rifle that now seemed to glaringly fake on close quarter.
Chapter 35: Cao
“There are too many cheaters in this world. The founder of RX Club wanted more equality and fairness in this world, so he built an underground community of do-gooders to rectify the imbalance of wealth accumulated through unjust means in the society by robbing the evil individuals, corporations or governments of their resources. And in this days and age, it’s their cryptocurrencies.” Cao explained as he walked me down the corridor of an underground lab under the roadside rest-stop. “That’s what Da Ming and I are responsible for in the club. Including you, we are the only three Chinese in the world working on financial technologies within RX. Da Ming is of course a lot more old-school, as you’ve seen. He likes working with his hands and feet, taking stuff, talking to people and extracting information, social engineering kind of thing, you know. My natural talent is in sales, as you could see from the success of Max Venture. And you’ll be our main tech guy here.”
I frowned. “So…I have no choice?” It never hurt to double-check, even though the answer was glaringly obvious. I was now in on a secret so big Cao and his people were ready to kidnap and threaten my ‘kin’ to keep it that way. At this very moment, his people had taken Paula, Jessie, Axe and Dumbo into custody in one of the rooms here, and I was told I could only meet them once they were ‘done’ with me. Whatever that meant. Some cousin I have, really.
Cao chuckled, “No, you don’t get to choose unfortunately.”
“Thank for nothing…” I murmured under my breath. “So I suppose I did very well in your test up there to be invited down here?” I almost wanted to kick myself. If I had been less observant, maybe I could have avoided the fate of being recruited into the RX Club totally. But of course, there was no knowing that I would still be breathing then if I had actually just handed the private key to Cao as requested.
He gave me one of those salesmen smiles they gave you when they knew the stuff they were selling was nothing but an overpriced piece of junk. “We have to do that to test the newbies. It’s standard operating procedure to test the character of the people we recruit. If they don’t buck under pressure and could still remain observant in extreme circumstances, then we know they will be loyal and useful members of the organization. After all, we are trusting people with a lot of money. You haven’t seen the half of it, Jong. I have been with them for a few years, and I have seen some pretty crazy deals.” Looked to me Cao hadn’t changed a bit. He was still the one who liked to toot his horn between the two of us.
