Big Mole

by Ming Cher

  “What about the fingerprints on the two guns and wallets inside the bag? The ghost could use that for the cops to get us. The bag came from this backyard, and the ghost knows it. Can’t you see that?”

  “Hmm. We have to be very frank. So…what you think we should do? That’s the big question.”

  “Can’t hang around here for the cops to come for us.”

  “You saying we should split up and go somewhere else?”

  “Of course lah. Do you have any other ideas?”

  “Look lah, if there is no ghost we won’t die. I am sure the ghost is hiding among us. Need to find him what, but must play safe. When our guys are here for the 11am meeting soon, we should tell them to split for a month or two, lay low.”

  “What about you and Sachee? Are you going to stay in the shop?”

  “Don’t know about Sachee, but I will. Promised Big Mole. If the cops find my fingerprints, I will admit the bag is mine, take the blame to get everybody else off the hook. Can say I found the guns in some bullshit place. There is something called ‘reasonable doubt’; all I need is a good lawyer to get charges reduced, maybe only for stolen property. See lah.”

  Quiet One exhaled; the mood of their brainstorming session had changed from negative to positive. He said, “If that’s the case…we should have a common fund for the lawyer. I am sure all of us can agree.”

  “Common fund should not be just for me. It is for any of us who needs it.”

  Quiet One weighed the pros and cons, and agreed. “That’s what you should say at the meeting soon. I am sure everybody respect you for taking the blame again. They keep their mouths shut for you, no matter what.”

  “I will do that,” the General said decisively. “Good to know you can see the big picture. Not many people can do that.”

  “Let’s wait and see what everybody has to say.”

  At 11pm sharp, all the backdoor rats showed up, already aware of what was on the front page of the newspaper. But there was no fear or regret on their faces. In fact, they were proud of what they had done. One of them laughed at the $5,000 reward: “Peanuts lah!”

  Another one boasted, “There has been a lot of talk and guessing everywhere as to who did that.”

  “People can talk all they want,” a macho guy added. “I laughed too when I heard the people at the coffeeshop in my area guessing about the murders.”

  Quiet One said, “The winds are tight outside, so we must be alert. Undercover cops will be picking up people at random for questioning.”

  Then the General told them about the ghost and the bag that could betray them, about how he would take the blame and why they needed a common fund for an emergency lawyer. He ended by saying, “No matter what, we must catch the ghost!” He stared around at his backdoor rats, trying to read their body language and figure out if the ghost was one of them.

  The backdoor rats were more than happy to give back ten per cent of their earnings for the reserve fund, but they felt uneasy with his suspicion, with nobody saying anything until Small-Time Thief spoke up: “Maybe that ghost is just somebody looking for scrap metal around the old rubbish heap behind our backyard, and hears the radio playing and wants to steal it. But then he sees that the stacks of gunny sacks might be useful for keeping the scrap metal in. He pulls them out and sees your bag under, so he runs away with the expensive things inside. I do the same thing if I were him!”

  Many heads nodded in agreement. “I think you are right,” Sachee said, looking at Small-Time Thief. “That could be the case. That guy is the ghost who took the bag!”

  “If so, we can’t catch him,” Loose Cannon explained. “He won’t dare to come back. He will disappear with all the money and things inside for sure.”

  “We better let things cool off first,” Fly-by-Night said. “There is still enough in our pockets to disappear for some time.”

  Everyone agreed, unanimously supporting the idea of laying low for a while. One by one, they handed over their contributions for the common fund to Quiet One, who said, “I will add up the balance later and let you all know. This is a very trying time for all of us. We must sink or swim together. We are all in the same wok.”

  “No matter what, don’t do anything stupid,” the General reminded them. “Just keep your ears and eyes sharp, wait for things to cool down.”

  “Even if the cops hang you upside down for questioning,” Quiet One said.

  Loose Cannon said, “They can break my bones, they will get nothing out of me.”

  Sachee said, “If I have a gun, I shoot down a big cop and make even bigger headlines in the newspaper!”

  “So where are you going after splitting from here?” Loose Cannon asked him.

  “Don’t know yet,” Sachee replied. “I want to roam the whole of Malaya and see more things outside Singapore, but have no motorbike licence yet.”

  “We go together, Sachee,” Loose Cannon said. “I have a licence, and still enough money to get a Norton bike today. You can sit behind me all the way. How about that?”

  “Have you been to Malaya before?”

  “Johore Bahru, that’s all. That’s why I want to go further for a change.”

  “You need a road map for that,” Quiet One said. “If not, can end up in the jungle if you take a wrong turn. Malaya is very big, eleven states. Singapore only a dot compared to Malaya. Every state is many times bigger than Singapore.”

  “Neither of us can read or write,” Sachee said. “Maybe we go by train instead from one state to another, see all the eleven states!”

  “That could be the answer,” Small-Time Thief said. “Can go all the way to the Thai border near Kelantan. Maybe we all go together for fun.”

  “For how long?” Loose Cannon said. “I wonder how much it will cost to do that.”

  “Depends on how you going to burn your money,” Fly-by-Night replied. “I heard people say everything in Malaya a lot cheaper than Singapore. You can easily find a good motel room with an attached bathroom for five bucks a day. Motel caretakers can arrange for private chicks for less than half what we pay here. You can live in heaven for less than thirty a day. Eat and fuck as much you like!”

  Quiet One mentally tallied up the cost. “You can all disappear in Malaya for three months and still come back with half of what you got now.”

  “So what are we waiting for?” Fly-by-Night said. “Can’t wait to go!”

  “Die-die go lah!” Loose Cannon exclaimed. “So when?”

  “Up to you,” Sachee said. “We should check the timetable at the railway station.”

  “How many of you are going?” the General asked, hoping to use the opportunity to single out who he suspected was the ghost, but everyone except for Quiet One raised their hands.

  •

  Big Mole sat at her kitchen table, pondering the $10,000 from the briefcase and nearly $2,000 she had taken from the dead men’s wallets, when Sachee rushed into the house and said, “I am going to see the whole of Malaya! Leaving straight away!”

  She could read Sachee like a book, and knew he was doing this to avoid the heat of the mass murder case, but she pretended not to know anything. “Really ah? Have you told Hong?”

  “Yah lah,” Sachee answered quickly.

  “How long you be gone?”

  “Three months, I think, maybe less. My mates are waiting at the railway station. I don’t want to miss the train. See you!” And he was gone.

  Under the General’s influence, Sachee had changed so much, and it was a hard thing for her to swallow. Before, he never would have left her alone like this. She felt vulnerable without him around for protection, and wondered how it would be to live alone, if she split up with the General. She had grown up surrounded by men, eating with men, talking with men, fighting and working with men, for as long as she could remember. She wasn’t close to any women, especially near her own age, with whom she could share her thoughts.

  She realised that she had to learn to live by herself for a change—to liberate
herself, to be free and independent. It was such a sudden thought, and it scared her somewhat, but she was excited as well. Hours passed, but she did not change her mind. She would start with that night, eating out alone, maybe going to see a movie alone, ready to experience life differently from how she normally did. She changed into a long batik frock with deep side pockets. As she was closing the windows on her way out, she saw the General walking up the stairs to her stilt house.

  “Hey, where you going?” he asked.

  “I am going out to look for a new boyfriend,” she said, intentionally provoking him.

  He thought she was upset with him for having left her alone all day, and put his arms around her. “Let’s go out to a proper restaurant for dinner,” he said. “I have found a carpenter to fix the back door of your shop.”

  “Don’t touch me!” she shouted and shrugged him off; it was time to draw her “cold sword” and break up with him. “I am done with you, Hong! You don’t care about me, only about your Koon Thong. You smell and keep me awake all night. You go to your ‘proper restaurant’ by yourself!”

  “Wahlao! Why so angry at me?”

  “I don’t want to argue any more!” she yelled. “Enough of your sweet talk. I want you out of my house. Give you three days. If you don’t, I will ask my neighbours to throw you out!” She stalked off, and didn’t look back.

  The General stood there, stunned, as he watched her walk out of the kampong. He thought she might be going to her shop, and decided to leave her alone to cool off. He lit the kerosene lamp in the lounge so that he could read his newspaper, and didn’t turn it off when he went out to eat at the food centre nearby. After his meal, the evening sky had become very cloudy, and gusty winds were howling. He walked quickly towards Big Mole’s shop to look for her, but she was not there.

  He lit the kerosene lamp on the shop’s smooth Formica counter, and sat down on the soft couch for a smoke, but a gust of wind suddenly rushed in from the broken back door and blew out his match before he could touch it to the cigarette paper; it also made the unlit phosphorous lamp dangling above the counter swing wildly. The flame of the kerosene lamp was also flickering inside its bottlenecked glass casing, creating shadowy movements inside the shop. He had left the sliding front door ajar, and wind whistled through the gap, reminding him of the three bodies on the concrete floor of the shop on Friday the 13th, which was only four nights ago.

  He knew about the Chinese superstition that the souls of the dead would return to where they had died a few days after their death, before entering the spirit world for their judgement, but he was not frightened. He didn’t believe in such things. But then lightning flashed, thunder roared and the gusts of wind felt like they were about to blow off the thatched roof, and Hong shivered despite himself.

  He climbed up onto the counter in his new leather shoes, and reached up to still the phosphorous lamp being tossed around in the abrupt gale. Rain now splattered into the shop through the broken back door and onto the smooth surface of the Formica counter, causing the kerosene lamp to glide precariously along the now slippery wet surface; if it tumbled onto the couch, the flame would surely start an inferno. He released his hold on the swinging phosphorous lamp and bent down quickly to grab the glass neck of the kerosene lamp, but forgot about how hot the burning wick had made the glass. Startled, he yelped in pain and dropped the lamp, losing his balance and slipping on the counter. He fell backwards onto the concrete floor as the lamp broke and fizzled out, spraining his right wrist and ankle, and bruising his tailbone from the hard landing. He limped toward the sliding front door to close it properly, and realised that he now resembled the tiger he had strangled at the redbrick house. He lurched back over to the couch, collapsed into it and groaned loudly.

  •

  Kwang had finished work on Tuesday evening and was sitting on his bunk in the workers’ quarters, a single-level rough-plank house with enough space to house over forty people, and a canteen nearby. Each worker had a space of about six by nine feet to call their own, marked with numbers like in a car park. He was smoking inside his mosquito net, thinking about his secret affair with Big Mole, and worried about how the General and Sachee would react if they were to find out.

  He decided to see Big Mole that night to end things with her. She was beautiful and he enjoyed spending time with her, but the risk of “losing face” was just too great. Plus, after his middle-aged foreman, a Hakka Chinese from Ipoh, had told him about the ruthless “scorched earth” tactics used by the British on villagers they suspected of helping the communist guerrillas living in the Malayan jungle, he wanted to dedicate himself to the cause of communism. The foreman had provided Kwang with a bigger picture of the world, which made him see red over what was also going on in Singapore, so he joined the communist party secretly as a junior member, attended their meetings, and talked about comradeship and self-criticism, among other things. Among his senior comrades was the burly Sikh gatekeeper, a former unionist in India who didn’t agree with Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent way of fighting for independence from British rule.

  Kwang left the worksite just as it was beginning to rain, and took a taxi to the Malay kampong; inside Big Mole’s house, the kerosene lamp was on, but no one was home, so he decided to brave the rain and walk to her fish shop, thinking that she might be there.

  At the same time, Quiet One arrived at the shop on his new bike, a 90cc Suzuki, to find the General groaning in pain on the couch.

  “Bad luck lah,” the General said as he sat up straighter and told Quiet One about his misadventures that evening.

  “Need to see a doctor. I know a very good one in Jalan Besar.”

  “Later lah, not so bad.”

  “So you not seen Big Mole at all tonight?” Quiet One asked, probing.

  “Don’t know where she went after our fight. I guess she is waiting for me at home. Heard anything on your side?”

  “Not since I saw Sachee and everybody leave on the train for their first stopover in Segamat.”

  “Any undercover cops around the railway station?”

  “No lah, I could see if they are around. But been lots of whispering about all-out war between 08s and 24s. 24 gang think 08s kill the tiger and those other guys.”

  “That’s due to us,” the General bragged and chuckled. “We started fire for them to clash.”

  Quiet One nodded. He flicked a match against the side of a match box, lit a cigarette, waved the match out and said, “We come a long way in a short time. Guess is time to live properly. I find a three-bedroom bungalow for rent in Serangoon from the newspaper, went to visit with estate agent. Rent is $150 a month only, got a backyard and carport. Whole place very modern. Even the bathroom bigger than my room in Jalan Besar. Need to give three months’ rent in advance, but can get the keys to move in immediately. Only four of those bungalows left in that area.”

  “Private enough?”

  “Very private. It’s on a no-exit road.”

  “Might as well lah. Place like that is progress for Koon Thong. Keep this between you and me. Still need to be careful because of the ghost that got our bag.”

  “Why worry about that? Small-Time Thief has a point. The ghost probably just somebody looking for scrap metal near our backyard. If not, the cops would be here by now, correct?”

  “Okay lah. We put the ghost aside. Once the phone in our bungalow is ready, we buy a second-hand van. Get some spray painter to put a picture of pet fish and the shop’s phone number on it, so it looks clean on the surface.”

  “Yah lor. We don’t have to let Big Mole know about our place in Serangoon. She very nervous about us already. Hey, you feed her fishes yet?”

  “No, not yet,” the General said. “Can’t move around much with my ankle.”

  “Leave it to me,” Quiet One told him. “Once I finish, I take you on my Suzuki to see the doctor.” He paused, then said, “Hey Hong, what’s going on between you and Big Mole? That all over for both of you?”

  �
��Hard to tell,” the General replied. “I think she is sick of waiting for me at home, that’s why she exploded. Might cool down later. She wants me to stop smoking, stop being in charge of Koon Thong, but cannot.”

  “What are you going to do next?”

  “Leave her alone for a few days first. She might change her mind later. It wouldn’t be easy for her to work here alone. I guess she think Sachee will be back soon to help her; she don’t know Sachee is on our side.”

  “You really going to let her run her shop alone?”

  “Why not? Teach her a lesson.”

  “So that she might cry for you later—that what you are hoping?”

  “Maybe lah. Has happen before.”

  “I don’t think you should dwell on Big Mole any more, Hong. Must think about Koon Thong first! Why don’t you let her go?”

  “Hmm, let’s see what we can do for Koon Thong first,” the General said, hoping to placate his treasurer.

  “Very important for all of us, Hong,” Quiet One reminded him. “That’s why I am here. We are in the same boat. You are the General. You know what I mean?”

  “You are saying Big Mole is not good for me.”

  “I am saying she is not good for Koon Thong. But I think you should split up nicely. She respect you for doing that, and might even come back to you in the long run.”

  “Long run I could be driving a Mercedes for her to see!”

  “That will make a big difference. We snap up the Serangoon bungalow tomorrow. I will feed her pet fishes to leave some goodwill behind. Might put a smile on her face later.”

  “Right, you are right. Good to know we can smooth out the differences together. I can move out of her house soon too.”

  “Have many things to move out?”

  “Just a bag of clothes, few boxes of my books, that’s all.”

  “Can hire two trishaws and load them inside the Malay kampong at one go,” said Quiet One. He stopped talking when they heard someone tapping on the sliding front door. It was Kwang, looking for Big Mole, hesitant about going inside, thinking that the General and Quiet One might be talking about his affair.