Chapter 436

"All the kopitiams in all the world, I'd find you here, Ms. Kong," Arthur said as he spotted the woman leading the procession, the gangsters forced reluctantly back by her protectors. Not that they couldn't deal with the fat and overweight majority of polis but then, that would start a whole different kind of fight.

Not worthwhile, not for an impromptu meeting with someone like Arthur. 

"We were surprised to hear that you had come to sell your cores, what with the agreement that we had," Cynthia said. 

"What agreement?" Arthur replied. "I never signed anything."

"Oh, you going to be like that? Your word not good enough?" she said that dryly, looking between him and the gang members. 

Arthur snorted, knowing that they took words of honor with much more seriousness than most. After all, you didn't want to put down illegal dealings in paper, so most things were agreed to in-person and held together via promises.  "We didn't make any of those either. We were negotiating what the government could provide last I recall. And only an idiot doesn't get things in writing with the government."

"Still, the Minister will be quite upset to see you down here rather than using an official core changer.”

“Maybe they should put a better rate then,” jeered Bolo.

One of the policemen stepped closer, a corpulent Indian fellow whose stomach strained the drab olive green of his uniform. Of course, his magnificent mustache helped offset the look, along with the wooden truncheon he hefted threateningly.

Not that Bolo flinched. In fact, he pulled a stool over with his other foot, and stuck his leg up, making sure to act even more the streetside tough.

“Boys,” Cynthia said. “And you know we would have been willing to offer better rates for a good friend like you.”

“True, but I wouldn’t know what the best rates were.” He tapped the paper that had listed everything. “Or what the going rates were at the moment.”

“Master Rick had mentioned that you might be looking for such details. He has had the finance department together a full presentation with detailed graphs and numbers going back a period of five years, both for local and international markets.” Then, the smirk curled upwards. “He believes he can provide a slightly better marginal rate than those locally as he has noted a few opportunities for international arbitrage.”

“Arbi-what?” Arthur frowned. “Planting? He wants me to grow cores?”

Cynthia sighed. “Arbitrage. The process of buying and selling across multiple markets, making a profit that way.”

“Being a middleman.”

“Exactly.”

“Which means if I go to the end user, it’d be cheaper right?” Arthur looked right at Bolo and then Doug who shrugged.

“My boss just want me to give his card ah. He never say anything about the core sales, but probably also lah. I hear you had problems with some of our people inside too, right?”

“A bit, though most of that was settled, I thought.”

“Never had problems with us,” Bolo said, smirking.

“Right. Well, here.” Arthur tapped the table as he figured out how to extract himself from all this. “I got to get some of my cores sold, the ones I have for myself.” He touched the app on his phone that broadcast his basic contact information, the one that was public and watched as they others received the data before he continued. “Send me your best options, I’ll sell my personal ones to them first.” He grunted. “I’ll also be sending that to the Prime Group too, by the way.”

Nodding to Cynthia, he continued. “I’m still waiting for more information from you, and then once you have the documents, I have to find a lawyer.” He glared at Keith before the man could answer, knowing he was going to interject something dumb like ‘We can help find you one’. “I’m happy to negotiate and talk with the Minister and the government, work out what we can do; but I’m not stopping everything just because you all need time.” He tapped his pocket where the cores were. “I’m on a deadline, remember?”

He watched the government employee slowly nod, as though she was expecting that. "Then, do you need help extracting yourself here?"

"Pretty sure I'm fine." Arthur stood up, turned and smiled at the group. "I think today's a bust for everything else, so I should just get going. I bet I'm causing trouble for the uncle there." A nod towards the old man and woman who were busy serving food, though business had obviously slowed down with the sheer volume of individuals taking up his space. "Keith?"

"Sure - uhh..." He hesitated as one of the others came up, whispered in his ear. He frowned, stared at the man incredulously, then let out a long sigh. "So... Rick wants me to pick up some of the claypot rice first.”

Whatever lingering tension there was was broken by the laughter as the disparate groups took the chance to make takeout orders from the old man. After all, if there was one thing that bound Malaysian’s together, it was their love of good food.

And as Arthur had noted, the claypot chicken rice here was very good.