Tar said, “Trust me, as someone who’s been in your shoes, getting difficult assignments straight from the Pillar, I wouldn’t trust a job like this to just anybody.”
Anden said, “Hilo doesn’t know I’m here.”
Tar raised his eyebrows and sat back. Anden could tell the former Pillarman was disappointed. He’d no doubt hoped that Anden’s visit had been suggested, or at least condoned, by the Pillar. But Tar was nevertheless flattered Anden had come to him, even after all these years, and that he was willing to risk his own standing with the Pillar by seeking out a clan pariah without Hilo’s knowledge and blessing.
Tar got up and brought back a couple more bottles of soda. When he sat back down, it was clear from the furrow in his brow that he was thinking about everything Anden had said. “You promise killing this man will be good for the clan? That it’ll be helpful to Hilo-jen?”
“Yes,” Anden said. “I wouldn’t be here if that wasn’t the case.”
“This Jon Remi. Does he deserve to die?”
The question caught Anden off guard. It didn’t strike him as the sort of thing that Maik Tar would’ve ever wondered, that he would’ve ever thought to ask in the past. But Tar was looking at him steadily, expecting an answer, and with an expression on his face that seemed unlike him, the face of a man who had been asking a lot of questions in the past decade of his life and was still hoping for answers.
Anden thought for a minute before replying. “Remi is what he is. In some ways, he’s admirable because he wants to live as his own man, and he demands respect for himself even when it seems everything is against him. But he uses jade only to prey on others. He extorts even Kekonese businesses. He’s killed many people, but always for money or drugs, never with a clean blade. His Snakeheads are no better than crewboys.” Anden paused. “He’s not the sort of Green Bone that should be allowed to exist. So he deserves to die as much as anyone in our world does.”
Tar was silent for a while. The answer had been more thought out and honest than he’d expected, and he appreciated Anden showing him—a disgraced, exiled clan murderer—enough respect not to lie to him or give him a pat response. Tar stood and they walked together to the door. He said, “I’ll always do what Hilo-jen needs done. Don’t worry about a thing, kid.”
As Anden stepped out the door of the small house, Tar asked, “Will you tell the boys, especially Cam, that their uncle Tar misses them and loves them? I know some mistakes can’t ever be fixed, but we’ve got to go on, don’t we, and try to make the most of what’s left. Tell them for me, all right?”
_______
The downfall of the Snakeheads was shockingly rapid even by the standards of the Resville underworld. The city police and federal authorities had never before received so much insider information about the country’s most notorious Keko-Espenian gang. Within a week of Remi’s death, they’d arrested nearly all the Bad Keck’s direct subordinates and charged them with a slate of crimes.
The remaining Snakeheads were unable to reorganize quickly enough to survive the onslaught by law enforcement and the opportunistic attacks by the Copa cartel and the local Crews. Those of Remi’s followers who managed to evade arrest went into hiding, fled the city, or left behind their activities and associations. Some of them went so far as to stop wearing jade. A few minor splinter gangs emerged, but they stayed strictly small-time and were looked down upon as being simple crooks. They had little or no jade and now none of the Green Bone leaders who sided with the Dauk family in Port Massy would grant jade to anyone with a criminal record.
The Crews moved quickly to take over the void left by the removal of the Snakeheads. Within a short time they brokered a tenuous agreement with the Copas, leaving their rivals most of the drug trade but reasserting control over the gambling, prostitution, and racketeering in most parts of Resville, except in the predominantly Kekonese areas, where they were liable to find themselves quietly and forcefully run out.
Within the Keko-Espenian Green Bone community, the line had been drawn. The message spread: Train in secret, wear your jade, protect your neighborhoods. If you become too greedy and make yourself into a Crew Boss, you’ll end up the same as Jon Remi, who paid for his defiance and disrespect to the Kaul family of No Peak.
While awaiting trial two months after his arrest, Maik Tar was found dead in his prison cell, having hanged himself with a torn bedsheet. Earlier that day, he’d walked around the prison yard in apparently good spirits, having nearly fully recovered from his injuries. He’d eaten dinner and joked with the guards and not been considered a suicide risk. He did not leave any note, although that evening he talked at length about his older brother, who’d been dead for eighteen years, and he said that he hoped there really was life after death, as some people said.