Singapore Noir

by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

  But his little gun changed all that. Now there was a secret to protect. Something to hide. Something that was truly only his, not shown to the rest of the world. The first week was difficult. He tried his best to act normally. His gun replaced the cash in his pouch. He began to carry the cash in his pockets, tied up in wads with rubber bands. Not that there was enough to make a large bulge in his pants, he said. The second cop smiled.

  The first one nodded; he saw no humor in the statement. “The officer who was issued that gun is dead,” he said. “He was a narcotics officer. When we found his body, we could not find his weapon. His killers must have taken it from him.”

  The old man felt the blood leaving his face. “You don’t think I killed him, do you?”

  The cops stared at him and said nothing. Their faces were blank, expressionless. There had only been four rounds in the cylinder. Had he managed to return fire only once? Or did they kill him with his own gun?

  “No, I found the gun. In my taxi.”

  “You have no criminal record. You are not linked to any of the suspects,” the first officer said.

  “I wouldn’t have hurt . . .” the old man began, then stopped.

  “So why did you keep it?”

  “Singapore isn’t safe anymore,” he said. Two cabbies dead already in the past year. Their killer or killers had asked them to drive out to some remote place in the night, and there, had cut one’s throat, stabbed the other, before making off with their money. Two lives for the meager sums that the drivers had struggled all day to collect. He shook his head. “We’re just not safe anymore.” His tone was accusing—he did not have to say the police were not doing their job. It was there, just in his tone, and the second officer looked away.

  “So you kept it for protection?”

  Protection? How else was he to defend himself? Against someone stronger—younger and fitter—and determined to kill him? Or if there were just more of them? With his gun, he had a chance. Four chances.

  “Suntec City,” he said. If these policemen were honest, they would blush, he thought. But they did not. “Suntec City,” he said again.

  Three drunk, young white men had beaten up an old cabbie at a taxi stand while white tourists in the line cheered them on as if they were in some underground fight club. Two Chinese men—local men—had gone to help the cabbie and wound up getting thrashed by the white men, to more cheering from the foreign white trash in the taxi line.

  “Singapore is safe,” he spat, “if you’re white and rich.”

  “We caught them and one of them is in jail.”

  The old man shook his head. The fucking police had let them go. Let them go on bail. Two absconded. Was that the plan? Didn’t they know the white cowards would run? They had not even bothered to investigate at first and the initial arrests had only been made after people on the Internet got involved, identified the men, and made a police report. And what had that fucking investigating officer said? Wah, you guys very free. Can do better than the police.

  “We’ve dealt with that officer.”

  The old man sneered. His peace was gone and the original gentleness with which he had viewed these two men in front of him was also gone, replaced by the anger that had been slowly corroding his insides until he’d found his gun. So yes, he reckoned that he and other Singaporeans could damn well do better than the police.

  “Do you know how serious your offense is?”

  Offense? He had not killed any precious white “foreign talent,” although he had considered it. There were only so many times he could drive by, refuse to stop to pick them up. There were only so many times he could stop, pick them up, take their condescending shit, take their scanning his cab for a NETS machine, and, seeing none, tell him they had no cash and ask if he had NETS. How many times had he driven to a cash machine—and have the fare never return to the cab? How many times had he been promised—Hey, uncle, I’ll pay you tomorrow. Just give me a call. Or pick me up again. I’ll make it up to you. White man’s honor. So superior. And when he had called? A quick cut, no reply.

  In the past, he had put up with it—it was an occupational hazard. People did that. Not just white expatriate types, but also local kids who never intended to pay their fares, making a game of leaving the cab quickly after he had stopped to drop them off. But over the years, the anger had grown and slowly eaten away at him. He had tried meditation. Since he did not like driving at night, he would go to a meditation center at Jalan Besar—a dingy place in a rundown prewar building at the corner of a traffic junction, above a bunch of dirty motorcycle repair shops. He had tried to find peace there. To find forgiveness for himself and others, to remember that all were one. But any peace he found would quickly disappear like incense smoke when he got into the cab and returned to the streets.

  Until his gun came—and suddenly he was calm, knowing that if he really wanted to, he could kill every one of them. At first it was just the white trash. Then it was the Singaporean women—the sarong party girls—the unofficial prostitutes that made Singapore a kind of sexual Disneyland for these white bastards. He did not mind actual call girls—they were making an honest living, just like he was—it was legal in Singapore anyway. But not the local women who thought only the white foreign trash were good enough for them, who actually thought them superior to local men simply because they were white and had expatriate paychecks. His list grew—but as he included more stereotypes, from obnoxious mainland Chinese to lecherous Indian nationals to bitchy Singaporean women to increasingly primped-and-preened local men as bitchy as their female counterparts, the greater his sense of calm grew too. They could behave as they wanted. Knowing he could kill them was consolation enough. That sense of power, of control, was good enough reason to risk everything he had—not much—to keep the gun. It calmed him and it made him smile, which really was good for Singapore’s tourist image. And we want to keep attracting the white trash, right? Smile, Singapore. He smiled—as a “taxi uncle” he was Uniquely Singapore too. His gun had made him a better man. Love all, serve all.

  And he had never threatened a fare with the gun. Or killed a fare. His gun had never come out of that pouch. He had never brandished it in a threatening manner, never made a show of it to a passenger. No one had ever known he had it.

  He thought of Ah Huat, who did not mind showing off a little, to those in the know. Ah Huat had a tiny wooden coffin in his cab. About four inches long, carved in a Chinese style, with the graceful sweeps and arcs that differentiated it from modern Western caskets. He had it in the glove compartment most of the time. But at night it rode on the dashboard, his silent passenger, the thing that watched his back because so much can go wrong at night. The thing that watched his back, and any passenger who understood would be fairly warned.

  Those who understood would know that in that little scaled-down coffin was the bone of a dead child—somewhat difficult to come by now because of cremation, but more common in the days of burials and when child mortality was still high. That bone, in its coffin, kept the child’s spirit with the owner. Both were bound to each other. Both were master and servant. Ah Huat had inherited that coffin from his father, and so now the child spirit that once followed his father, followed him to do his bidding—on the condition that Ah Huat took care of it. Ah Huat sometimes made a show of it, in the way that Christians sometimes liked to say grace loudly in public.

  When he ate, he would order two meals. Or two cups of coffee. He would pay for both, but consume only one. Those who did not understand would simply think he had been stood up, probably by an inconsiderate child or an unfaithful mainland Chinese girlfriend only interested in him as a meal ticket or for his Central Provident Fund savings. Those who understood knew he was feeding his child spirit—and the waiters who knew would keep their distance from the apparently uneaten meal, to clear it later when it was safe.

  And that was why Ah Huat never let a fare sit in the front passenger seat: it was already occupied.

  The old man tho
ught about his gun in the pouch, tucked in the side pocket of his door, the zipper facing up, ready to be opened quickly. Always there for him. He reckoned it gave him the same kind of comfort the child spirit gave Ah Huat. Both were dangerous, but Ah Huat and he were steady men, not prone to violence, not reckless, with no vices. When they met for the occasional meal, all three of them, Ah Huat sometimes talked about his child, about how it sometimes helped pick winning numbers or helped him get back at someone for some injustice. Better than any of his living kids, he said. The old man had heard these stories often enough and did not need to compare notes. He had his gun, and it made him feel safe. Security was good to have in old age. It was like a life insurance policy, though, a one-time-use thing. He would have to die on the road. He could not afford to survive a serious accident. While Ah Huat could call on his child spirit repeatedly, the old man knew his gun had only four shots, and if he ever had to use it, it would be all or nothing.

  He knew the time had come when he got home late, after driving all day, to find the front door splashed with paint and the pale, bled-out face of a recently slaughtered pig hanging from the flimsy metal gate. His landlady had finally hit rock bottom. She had borrowed money from loan sharks—and defaulted on the payment. It was something she had said she would never do. There were enough neighbors with experience to serve as fair warning.

  “I paid,” she had insisted when he went in to find her and the two boys cowering in a corner of their room. She and the younger boy were crying and the older one was trying his best to comfort them. “I paid, I paid. They gave me a loan I did not ask for,” she said.

  He had eyed her dubiously. “Didn’t ask for?”

  “No, they just put it in the bank. I didn’t even know.”

  This was new to him. An unasked-for loan, in the form of a bank deposit, followed by a demand for repayment—and interest, of course. “Didn’t you even think about why you had so much money?” He found it hard to believe that, hard up as they were, she would not have noticed the extra cash.

  “I thought you put it in,” she had said. “I thought you put it in for the boys. I never used it.”

  “Then you can give it back. You give it back tomorrow.” He had looked at the boys and nodded to them. “I will take care of you, don’t worry.” The older boy nodded back but the younger one was still terrified. He reached out to pat his head. “Uncle will protect you.”

  They came the following night.

  They had announced their arrival with yelling and hammering at the door. He opened up to speak to them and pay them, and to his horror found that they had lifted the flimsy old gate from its hinges and now stood facing him with no barrier between them. It had been a simple matter of removing a few retaining pins—an old trick that contractors used when they wanted to convince people to “upgrade” their gates.

  There were two of them, and in the narrow corridor already crowded with potted plants and now a dismantled gate, they had to stand one behind the other. They looked so ordinary. The one in front looked like anyone he could have met in the building, a man in his thirties or so, not so tall, but stocky. His face was pale and flabby, like the pig’s head on their door the previous night. Pig Face.

  The one behind was much younger, taller, and slimmer, like any teenage punk with dyed hair, piercings in his earlobes, and tattoos—pretty ones he probably thought made him look cool. The old man knew what actual Triad tattoos looked like. The boy was just a punk. It was strangely quiet, as if all the neighbors had gone into hiding.

  “Pay,” the first collector had said. “Don’t waste my fucking time.”

  The old man had nodded and took out the wad of cash from his shirt pocket. The collector snatched it from him, removed the rubber band, and began counting. His beady eyes were angry when he looked up again.

  “Fucker, you trying to waste my time, is it? This is not enough.”

  “That’s everything you put in her account.”

  “I didn’t put. My boss put. He tells me to collect how much, I collect. This is not enough. Interest?”

  The old man had said nothing. He merely shook his head.

  “That means you still owe my boss.”

  “She owes you nothing,” he said. Then more deliberately: “Tell your boss to fuck off. And if he tries that again—”

  “Try what again? What are you going to do? You fucking useless old man, what are you going to do?”

  He had already known the outcome of this exchange. He had heard enough stories. Loan sharks, like every other Singaporean, really wanted permanent passive income. A dividend they could collect forever from a small initial investment.

  “You think you can fucking protect this woman, those boys? You’re a fucking old man, you got no fucking balls anymore, what are you going to do?”

  He would have let an insult go, but not a threat to harm the woman and the boys. He was losing his calm, his peace. Then, to make his point, Pig Face slammed his palm into the old man’s chest and he staggered back. Pig Face had stepped across the threshold into the flat and the woman screamed. The old man recovered his balance and reached behind his back for his gun, tucked into the waistband of his loose trousers, hidden under his shirt. Pig Face saw the movement and thought the old man was going for a knife.

  “I also got,” he spat, and drew out a knife from his back pocket, but even as he began to open the blade, he saw the tiny, glaring red light and quickly backed toward the door. “Run!” he yelled.

  The teen with the dyed hair, piercings, and tattoos bolted down the corridor. Pig Face stumbled as he turned around. He tripped over the bars of the metal gate that they had so recently taken down and landed heavily on the ground. The old man loomed over him, the gun in both his hands, that wicked red eye glaring down at the guy.

  “Please,” the collector had whimpered. “They made me do this. I owe money also. I can’t pay. They made me do this. I have a family.” He slowly got up.

  The old man watched him, following him with his gun, tracking the collector’s face with the red laser dot. He knew it was the end. His gun was no longer a secret. And life as he knew it was over. One chance, and he had been forced to waste it on these punks. The collector turned around as he lowered his gun. The old man felt the anger and the heaviness return as the collector moved down the corridor as quickly as the pain would allow him.

  Only one thing to do. He squeezed the trigger. He heard the bang and the echo as the sound ricocheted around the surrounding blocks, he heard the collector yell as the bullet hit him in the butt, he heard the woman and the boys shouting, the neighbors screaming in fear. The whole world had erupted in sound, but he heard only a calm silence in his own soul.

  The collector struggled down the corridor, groaning from the pain and trailing blood, and the old man followed, the red laser spot on his back the whole time. He got to the stairs, fell down a flight, picked himself up, stumbled painfully down all three floors, the old man just behind him, as if seeing a guest out. It was a good feeling, to usher someone out this way, usher out all the bitterness, all the anger, all the frustration, all those feelings of helplessness. He had not felt so good, so strong, so powerful, in a very long time.

  The collector reached the ground-floor lobby, right next door to the now empty and dark People’s Action Party branch office. Downstairs neighbors had rushed toward the sound but screamed and ran when they saw the old man’s gun.

  The collector was weeping as he lay on his side, his face drenched in sweat and tears. “Please,” he begged. “Please.” It was a face the old man recognized. It was the face of everyone he had ever known—and everyone who had ever hurt him. It was a white man’s face, an Indian national’s face, a Chinese national’s face, a sarong party girl’s face, a new urban male’s face, a teenage punk’s face, his ex-wife’s face, her lover’s face, his former boss’s face, his representative of Parliament’s face, the pig’s face on the gate, all leering at him in unison like that goddamned Smile, Singapore poster. He h
ad to get rid of all those faces.

  He put the gun to his own temple, smiled at a terrified neighbor, and calmly pulled the trigger. There was a click. And then he understood what it wanted him to do. Everything was clear now. He lowered the gun again, put the little red dot on the collector’s face, and squeezed the trigger three more times.

  PART II

  LOVE (OR SOMETHING LIKE IT)

  Reel

  BY CHERYL LU-LIEN TAN

  Changi

  Ah Meng knew how it would end even before they appeared.

  The nibong poles would have long been in place, a wooden labyrinth designed to attract and confuse. He imagined their hearts racing, surges of blood pumping through, adrenaline pulling them further into the buttery blackness, panic steering them along the rows of columns. They would sense then that it was too late. Even so, there was nothing left to do but swim, just keep swimming. It carried reassurance, even if false. By the time the nets closed in, snuggling them together in a tight slippery ball, there was no more point in trying.

  This was stupid daydreaming, Ah Meng’s mum would say. Fish so stupid—where got brains to think? The woman had a point. And the truth of that was what kept the family in business. Not good business, mind you—fish farming was becoming far more practical and lucrative than kelong fishing these days. But to start a new fish farm—expensive, lah. Maybe when Ah Long came back from Queensland with his atas business degree then they could discuss. For now, with the kelong that Kong Kong set up years ago, the family managed to catch enough each month to pass the time. Not good, not bad. Just can, lah.

  Just can. That was what Ah Meng’s days were, one flowing into the next. His only relief came one Sunday. Ah Meng was squatting on the jetty after a late breakfast smoking a cigarette, trying to see how long he could pull on it, how long he could get the ash to last before it fell off in one long tube. He was getting better at it—almost reaching one and a half centimeters now!—which made him feel a bit proud, lah, even if no one noticed or cared. Life on the kelong is just like that, he had learned in a year. If you don’t notice the small things, there’s nothing to notice at all.