House Of Cards (BTS EDITION)

Damn Good Bluffer pt.4

When he had joined the desk for narcotics and illegal substances he had found out about Haedogje Pa very quickly. Even now it was impossible to not see their name popping up everywhere that he looked. There wasn’t a day spent at his laptop that he didn’t come across the gang at least ten times. With them controlling the criminal underground in Seoul it made perfect sense. Yet Taehyung had discovered something when he had starting delving deeper into the databases. Taehyung had discovered his rather tremendous ability to recall names and faces, and chunks of information that he had never truly done so before. He had learnt the high-ranking members well enough to be almost a relative of theirs, and he could connect them all up like a web. It wasn’t just a single aspect that he could memorise, but rather entire hierarchical systems. Taehyung had never realised how fantastic his visual memory was, and it was sorting through the files and updating databases that had allowed him to show the team just how useful he really was. He wasn’t just a desk jockey, trapped behind a table with a laptop and a pot of coffee. He was so much more than that.

It had shocked Namjoon to the point of dumb silence when he had first given a name of a prolific member in regards to a conversation that he had overheard. The other young man and Youngjae had been puzzling over a rather sloppy hit on a dealer that had been called Oh, standing in front of a cork board just across the department room as they had tried to figure it all out. Taehyung had heard them trying to figure out who the f**k would have killed their own dealer when the name “Choi Wooyoung” had spilled out of his lips without a second’s hesitation. It had made perfect sense to him, seen as he had been listening to a recording just an hour earlier dated a month prior in which the man had vocalised concerns about a loss of profits in a district. The exact same district that Oh had worked before his untimely death. From there Namjoon and Youngjae had connected the dots, but they had needed the initial push in the right direction to do so.

That had been the first time that Taehyung had used his memory to assist in the process of lining up suspects for arrest. It had not been the last. He didn’t know why but he had just stored knowledge about Haedogje Pa away and he could utilise it without needing to reference the databases in most situations. Sungah had once referred to him as a university lecturer, an expert at Haedogje Pa knowledge. Daesu had told him that he needed to get a life.

It was that very skill of his that had gotten him caught right in Namjoon’s sights of course. If one were to send an undercover agent into the fray, what better one to pick than one that knew names and faces and allegiances almost as if they were already in the gang?

That was why he had been pulled out of desk duty and instead thrust into a series of terrifying and rigorous mandates to get him prepared. That was why, just a week from now, he was going to be dragged into Haedogje Pa. It was also why he was he sitting in a café with their informant halfway across the capital rather than at his office desk.

“Right,” Lim said as he opened the manilla file and started spreading the photographs out across the table. Over the slightly tacky coffee rings and scattering of loose sugar particles. “Let’s try this one last time, huh?”

Taehyung had never met Lim prior to this arrangement. Being an informant he had needed to stay well away from the department at all times, which was why Taehyung now owned a brand new phone and a whole new set of falsified credentials to his name. Upon first meeting him he had been surprised for he hadn’t looked like what he had expected. Taehyung had expected a rather grizzled middle-aged man, tough and sinewy in a street weathered kind of way. He had not expected a rather chubby man with stubble on his jowls and hair that was too long and slightly unkempt. But despite this he saw signs on him that showed that he had worked his job well. First of all his rather flat pug-like face showed a nose with a crooked bridge from multiple breakages, and his stubble couldn’t fully disguise the scar on his cheekbone either.

But it wasn’t just his face. Lim showed himself in a manner that bled confidence and influence. His suit was designer, the heavy Rolex wristwatch sneaking out from the cuffs whenever he reached over to retrieve something a sign of his bank account. He breathed slow and evenly. He even blinked as if on a perfectly timed cue. It showed fantastic control and Taehyung had found himself consciously copying him during their meetings. Lim was an informant, a spy in other words. He lived and breathed the Haedogje lifestyle and he didn’t break character once. Even during their meetings he was a gangster, not a police officer. At first Taehyung had been quite simply terrified by his brusque and blunt nature. One time he had made a mistake the man had grabbed one of the knives from their table and had stabbed it right at him. “That’s it, you’re dead,” Lim had spat and he had thrown himself back in the chair and had toppled over to land in a mess on the floor.

All he had done was state that Park Woobin was a dealer in methamphetamine. No, that was Park Wooyoung. Park Woobin had links to strip clubs and was most certainly not a name to be dropped in casual company lest he wanted to piss a great many men off.

Every time that Taehyung had made a mistake he had done something like that. A stab at his hand or chest with a rather blunt butter knife, the press of something against his knee that might just have been a gun from under the table. Lim had trained him to be so scared of f*****g up a street name or the standardised charge for m*******a that Taehyung had learnt that thinking before replying was a safer option. Replies didn’t need to be blurted out like answers to a high school quiz. He could take three seconds to get a correct answer and keep his cool, rather than get it wrong and potentially lose his head.

It wasn’t about being perfect, Lim had told him. It was about knowing the information mostly for his own gain. The more he knew, the stronger he was. That was why he was being tutored like this. Knowledge is power, and every member of Haedogje Pa had power.

“Some of this is pretty easy,” Lim explained, settling the pages down like a teller dealing cards. “You’ve met one or two of ‘em before. If you dunno ‘em then this time I won’t pretend to stab you, I’ll f*****g stick you like a roast pig kid.”

“The support’s appreciated like always,” Taehyung muttered as he watched him finish spreading the photographs out.

Lim hadn’t just taught him how to handle the pressure of quick thinking, he had also ensured that he been seen in his company around other low ranking members. Taehyung couldn’t just show up one day out of the blue. He had needed to be eased into it all. His wardrobe was no longer filled with casual clothing and the handful of shirts and black trousers that he needed for his desk duty. No, all of that had been replaced in favour of suits. Not designer, not yet, but better quality and well-fitted. He needed to look the part, in both fashion and how he held himself. Taehyung had spent many evenings in front of a mirror pulling at his shirt cuffs and just trying to look like he belonged in a suit; like it was a second skin to him. It was hard but he had reached a point in which he now felt a little more confident in himself.

Mostly that was because he had stood in the same room as several other gangsters other than Lim and he was still breathing now.

Those meetings had been absolute hell for him. Taehyung had spent the first three convinced that he would f**k up and say the wrong thing. Even when he hadn’t been the centre of attention he had been terrified. He was there to stand by Lim’s side, often like a silent witness to the deals that were agreed to. So far he had witnessed bribery for a local government election, the forced removal of a rather enthusiastic D.A., and illegal property development. That was Lim’s field of entry into Haedogje Pa, and it meant that Taehyung had needed to stay very alert in the small meetings. Always in public but in locations that he had known that the gang owned. Coffee stores that were always filled with men in suits and women that looked like escorts, restaurants with bouncers on the doors. He had once even been dragged to an underground strip club to sit in a back room for a deal. The bass had pounded loud enough for him to feel it like a heartbeat. As if the deal hadn’t been stressful enough, the sight of naked women and men writhing around poles and on polished counters hadn’t helped alleviate the sensation.