by Ming Cher
In the hot afternoon, there were no customers in the pet fish shop. It was Quiet One’s turn to be there that day, and he was reading the newspaper at the shop’s counter. When Eng Hock arrived, he recognised Quiet One straight away as the person who had driven the getaway car in the pawnshop robbery that had landed him in prison. Quiet One had not forgotten Eng Hock either; he immediately thought the private detective was still working at the CID and was investigating the mass murder case. His face went white and he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking when he took out a cigarette to steady his nerves.
Eng Hock strolled up to the counter with a smile. “Hey! Mr Getaway Driver! I remember you! How long have you worked here?”
“Nuh-not very long,” he stammered, his eyes downcast.
“How long is not very long?”
“Aaah…mmm…er…on and off for about three months.”
“You own the shop, do you?”
“No, this is not my shop.”
“Where is your boss?”
“Aaah…he is not here today.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“I-I-I am not sure, why?”
“That’s not for you to ask, Mr Getaway Driver. Where does he live, hah?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.”
“Aaah, no.”
“Are you sure?”
“I told you, I don’t know where he lives.”
“I will find that out myself then. See you around, Mr Getaway Driver!” Eng Hock walked out of the shop with no doubt that Quiet One was hiding something; he wouldn’t have acted so nervous otherwise.
When Eng Hock returned to the agency and told his two partners how he had questioned Quiet One, they all laughed boisterously over it. Abdullah said, “No wonder my kampong source said there was always a different fella looking after the pet fish shop every day. There must be something very ‘fishy’ going on there.”
“That’s what I thought,” Eng Hock said. “That chap was very nervous. Did your kampong source know how many of them are taking their turns to work in that shop?”
Abdullah waved his cheroot. “No, not yet. But it’s not a problem—leave that to me.”
“Mr Getaway Driver also has a new motorbike outside the shop, a 90cc Yamaha,” Eng Hock said. “I doubt he could make enough money working in the shop to afford that, so he must have gotten it another way. I got his bike’s licence plate number. We can always ring our friends at the Registry of Vehicles to find out where he lives.”
“Might as well do that now,” Varasamy said.
They discovered that Quiet One had recently changed his address from the red light district in Jalan Besar to the same place as his boss, the General—the bungalow in Serangoon. The three musketeers smelt a rat, and began speculating.
Abdullah commented, “He has already done his time in prison. Why deny knowing where his boss lives if they share the same address? Makes me wonder what is actually going on between them and all those guys working in the shop.”
“I gave him something to think about before I left,” Eng Hock said. “That must have shaken him up.”
“He might run,” Varasamy said. “We need to find out where everyone else is staying.”
“With what we already know, they can’t go far,” Eng Hock said.
•
Quiet One thought back to his time in Changi Prison, during which he had to, on several occasions, help remove the bodies of condemned prisoners after they had been hanged at the gallows. He turned it over and over in his mind, determined never to go back there; it was time to flee with the money he was keeping as the treasurer for Koon Thong. Some of it was in the bank, to help Koon Thong look like a legitimate business, but much of it was kept as cash inside the bungalow he shared with the General.
He closed the shop and rushed on his 90cc Yamaha to withdraw what was left in the bank account before the bank closed. He found a public phone booth to ring a backdoor rat at his new semi-detached bungalow in Bedok. “Hey,” he said. “I go see an old friend for few hours. You do me a favour and reopen the shop for rest of the day?”
“Sure leh,” said the backdoor rat. “I be there straight away.”
Quiet One thanked him like a brother, and rang the General to lure him away from their shared house. There was no answer. “Good,” he told himself, and rode to the house to pick up the rest of the cash. He fled on his bike via the Johore Causeway, and arrived in Malacca three hours later.
•
The General was out with Fly-by-Night to meet a contact for stolen canned pineapple of the world-famous Lee brand, taken directly from the canning factory. The Lee truck driver had managed to get away with so much canned pineapple by simply appearing to deliver one truckload once a week. The factory had millions of cans of pineapple ready for shipping worldwide, and the factory’s chief covered up the shortfall by doing stocktaking at the end of every week.
“Can come up with the cash at any time,” the General told his contact in Tanjong Pagar.
“How much you willing to pay?” the contact said.
“As long as I can double my money within a month, can go up to five grand for a start,” the General said. “You have my word.”
“You easily do that in less than a month,” the contact assured him. “You need storage space.”
“How much space?”
“Enough room for four hundred cases in one big truck. There are forty-eight cans in a case. We are talking about twenty thousand cans a truckload.”
“Space not a problem. I can handle that,” Hong said, thinking of the Bedok bungalows shared by his backdoor rats. “How much you want for a case?”
“$5 a case, so that’s around ten cents a can. It cost fifty cents a can to buy from the shops.”
“How can we sell that much in a month? I have no way of doing that.”
“Look lah, restaurants catering for weddings use a lot of pineapple for cocktails and sweet and sour dishes. Average about twenty weddings a month, using up to four or five cases per wedding with thirty to fifty tables for over four hundred guests. You only need a few of those catering restaurants to turn a profit. Can give you their names and you contact them. They buy for $10 a case, about twenty cents a can.”
“Sounds very easy,” the General said. “Why don’t you do yourself?”
“I am just a broker—no desire to distribute.”
“How we pick up the goods?”
“That come directly from one of those big Lee trucks, when they come from the canning factory to their warehouses at the wharf, where they go before they are shipped. You have anywhere you can meet the truck?”
“No lah, I don’t.”
“There is an abandoned granite quarry in Bukit Batok with rundown shed at the end of an unused, dead-end dirt road. Truck will be there for you to unload the cases.”
The General saw that he was dealing with a professional broker who knew exactly what he was doing. “Okay lah, I am ready when you are,” he said. “When can we start?”
“I ring you tomorrow afternoon to arrange the exact time,” the broker replied.
The General sealed the deal with a handshake. “I wait for your phone call tomorrow.”
•
That evening, when the General and Fly-by-Night went back to the Serangoon bungalow to inform Quiet One about the deal, he was not at home. But all his belongings were still there, so they thought he had just gone out to do his own thing.
“I come here in the morning,” Fly-by-Night said, and left.
When Quiet One did not return that night, the General went into his room and discovered that the Koon Thong cash was completely missing. He frantically phoned all his backdoor rats to ask for Quiet One’s whereabouts. Most of them guessed he had gone to some whorehouse in Jalan Besar, where he used to live. But the backdoor rat who had looked after the shop for Quiet One said, “He tell me he going to see an old friend when he phone me yesterday afternoon.”
“H
e sound anxious?”
“No leh, normal. Might still be at his friend’s place what. Probably he be back later. You talk to the other guys?”
“Yah lah, and they don’t know. You see him, tell him to ring me. Very important.”
The broker called to fix the time for the delivery at the abandoned granite quarry in Bukit Batok, and suggested the next morning. The General agreed and rang his top four rats for a private meeting at his Serangoon bungalow. Sachee came on his Norton bike with Loose Cannon, and Small-Time Thief with Fly-by-Night on his Vespa. The General told them about Quiet One going missing, along with all the Koon Thong money.
Loose Cannon said, “Maybe we should postpone the deal.”
“No lah, can’t do that,” said Fly-by-Night, who was the one who had introduced the broker. “That’s like cutting our own throats. We must keep our word.”
“That’s right,” Fearless Sachee agreed. “We live for our word. We don’t want a bad name.”
Small-Time Thief said, “We all combine what we have to front the cash before tomorrow afternoon. That’s better than keeping all the eggs in one basket.” He looked pointedly at Hong.
“I have no problem with that,” the General said, brushing aside the criticism but seething inside at the betrayal. He called the other backdoor rats and told everyone to meet up in an hour at the pet fish shop.
The old Malay matchmaker was walking by the shop later, and noticed the array of new motorbikes parked along the roadside, even though the fish shop was closed. She took down all the licence plate numbers, and phoned Abdullah with her information.
•
“If that chap is paying the rents for six three-bedroom houses,” Eng Hock said, after they’d gotten the addresses and rental information, “there must be something very funny going on behind that shop. They cannot be selling so many fish and plants. No wonder Mr Getaway Driver was so nervous when he saw me.”
“My kampong source will keep an eye on the shop and let us know if anything changes,” Abdullah said.
“At least we know all their addresses now,” Varasamy said.
•
That night, Hong waited anxiously in his Serangoon bungalow for any news about Quiet One, and jumped every time his phone rang. He was worn out from his anxiety and uncertainty, and was kept awake all night. The broker rang around 8am the next morning to confirm the exact time of delivery for the canned pineapple at the abandoned granite quarry.
“It’s set up for between half past one and two this afternoon,” he said. “You got that?”
“Okay, I be there with my people before half past one,” the General assured the broker. Then he rang his backdoor rats and split them into two groups. Half were to stand by at the abandoned granite quarry for the arrival of the Lee pineapple truck, and the other half were to wait at their Bedok bungalows for him to arrive with the canned pineapple in his second-hand van.
However, the General was too tired from lack of sleep to realise that his van was being followed by Eng Hock and Varasamy in Eng Hock’s car, all the way from his Serangoon bungalow to the dead-end dirt road in Bukit Batok. They stopped far enough away so as not to be spotted and staked out the coming transaction. After about an hour, they saw five motorbikes meet up with the van, followed shortly by a fully-loaded tall truck from the Lee canning factory, covered with a canvas canopy. The nine backdoor rats quickly unloaded the cases from the truck, and transferred them to the van while Hong supervised. After they were done, the truck turned around and left the quarry by another road, followed by the motorbikes; shortly after, the van started up and proceeded the same way, riding low. Eng Hock followed the van.
Although the backdoor rats had done all the physical labour at the abandoned quarry, the General was exhausted. He kept blinking his eyes to stay awake in traffic and had no idea he was being tailed the entire time by the two private investigators.
“I am sure our friend, the new Inspector Lim, will be glad to learn about all this,” Varasamy said as they followed the weaving vehicle. “This is a big catch that will attract plenty of media attention.”
“You’re right,” Eng Hock said. “The Lee Pineapple Company is owned by Lee Kong Chian, the richest man in Singapore. And we are dealing with a sophisticated larceny ring. The newspaper might even put this story on the front page. As soon as we see where the cases are being delivered, I’ll give him a call.”
The General made it to Bedok without incident, and the cases were offloaded into the various bungalows. He could barely keep his eyes open any more. “Have to go back for a good sleep,” he said to Loose Cannon and Sachee. “Wait for my phone call tomorrow.”
“We won’t go anywhere until we hear from you,” Sachee promised.
The General returned to Serangoon, and immediately collapsed into sleep, totally burnt out after two sleepless nights. He was completely unaware when the police squads arrived at his bungalow just after midnight and banged on his front door. When there was no answer, they kicked down the door, and found him in the bedroom, talking in his sleep. They shone their bright torchlights onto his face and shook him awake, and it was like his worst nightmare come to life. He immediately thought they were there to capture him at last for the mass murder at Spottiswoode. Fear, fuelled by an insomniac intensity, made him snap, and he jumped at the shadowy cops, flailing wildly and hopelessly, screaming and swearing and weeping crazy tears until the cops pinned him down.
In the simultaneous mass arrests that night, there was no resistance from all the backdoor rats staying in Bedok. In fact, they looked proud as they were handcuffed and led out of their homes, their chins up for their photos to be taken by the accompanying reporters.
•
“Better for you to be honest with me,” Inspector Lim said to Sachee the following afternoon in Cantonese. “How long have you all been stealing these things?”
“We start doing that yesterday,” Sachee joked.
Inspector Lim took a breath to keep his cool and asked, “Whose idea is it?”
“Money,” Sachee said, attempting to make the question look stupid.
“How many of you involved altogether?”
“You don’t know how to count from our photos last night?” Sachee said and laughed.
Inspector Lim exhaled; he knew he had to find the weakest among the lot who would be more likely to talk. Sachee was a tough customer, so he carried on with the next one.
But Loose Cannon also denied responsibility. “Don’t ask me,” he said cockily. “I am just a small fly!”
“Who is your big fly?”
“We have no big fly. We all small flies what.”
Normally Lim would have given him a hard time for his cockiness, but the CID chief had decided to observe the interrogations, so he restrained himself.
Next was Small-Time Thief, who was just relieved that he wasn’t being charged for the mass murder. He said, “I don’t know who get canned pineapple from the factory. I only get it from somebody else who arranging it lor.”
“All right then,” said Inspector Lim. “Who is that somebody?”
“My friend’s friend of another friend.”
Lim shook his head. “So where can I find this friend’s friend of another friend?”
“Don’t know where he is,” Small-Time Thief answered. “Even if you release me, I still can’t find him for you.”
The Lee truck driver had been picked up that morning. He also didn’t give anything away about the inside job, and only told them how the goods had changed hands at the abandoned quarry, which Lim already knew from Eng Hock’s report. He said he had acted alone, out of desperation, to earn money to repay his debts to loan sharks, and begged for mercy. He was granted bail; his cooperation and confession would make him a witness for the prosecution during the backdoor rats’ trials.
The General was incoherent, no matter how much Inspector Lim questioned or threatened him. All he did was mumble to himself about Koon Thong, and something about driving a Mercede
s in the air. He was sent to Woodbridge Hospital under armed guard, and given electroconvulsive therapy, after which he never said another word.
10
Return to Makassar
Good and evil run along parallel lines like railway tracks. While the General was undergoing ECT, Big Mole was looking at the photo on the front page of the newspaper, of Sachee and the backdoor rats handcuffed and under arrest. Li Lian read her the story in English and then paraphrased in Malay; the four of them were having breakfast at the kitchen table before opening the fancy dress shop for business.
“They are all very young,” Margaret said and clucked her tongue.
“I suppose they will go to jail for a long time,” Big Mole said quietly. “Don’t you think so?”
“Probably, if their photos are on the front page,” Li Lian replied. “So, are you excited about going to Hong Kong with Jade?”
“Yes. I’ve never flown on a plane before. When I come back, I want to start learning to make another replica of the Makassar prahu.”
“You sound like you are obsessed with it.”
“I am. I don’t know why. I feel very carried away every time I look at it. I know it’s strange to say that.”
“Why?”
“I can’t explain it. I don’t think I will know until I have finished. Don’t you think it’s strange?”
“I don’t know.”
Big Mole smiled. She thought about her own secrets, and changed the subject. “Have you ever thought of going to live in Indonesia?”
“I don’t think so. I was born here in Singapore. But I want to visit Sulawesi and learn more about it. My parents think Indonesia is the most interesting place in the world.”
“How so?”
“Indonesia has over two hundred native dialects and over thirteen thousand islands, all full of different myths and beliefs,” Margaret interjected. “There are people who still live the same way their ancestors did for thousands of years.”
“Sailing to the Indonesian archipelago is like sailing back in time,” Li Lian’s father said with a grin.