Crime Scene: Singapore
Page 11
‘Of course. The ability to conceal our product is one of its main advantages really.’ He leaned back in his chair, as far back as it would go without falling. One of the men standing at the back stepped over and made sure the chair didn’t go too far. ‘So Mr Finance Minister, do you think we can do a deal then?’
Kwan smiled, turned to Nurdi, then turned back and smiled again. ‘It’s very possible. We would first have to agree a price though.’
‘Of course; price is the spinal column of business, isn’t it?’ Lok then turned to the person to his right and said something in that language which Kwan couldn’t understand. Man to the Right nodded, then plucked a folded sheet of paper from a dark blue folder and slid it across the table to Kwan. Kwan picked it up, unfolded it and held it out so that both he and Krishnan Nurdi could read at the same time.
‘As you can see, gentlemen, there are a number of prices there. The price per unit goes down depending on the number of units you purchase at any one time.’ Lok then smiled broadly and raised one finger high like a young child who had just learned a new phrase. ‘Economies of scale, you know.’
Krishnan Nurdi sputtered a laugh. ‘Very resourceful. It’s like you were selling digestive biscuits, or crisps, or cigarettes.’
Lok beamed a boyish smile and nodded. ‘Yes. It is the same principle anyway, isn’t it?’
‘Not here in Singapore,’ Kwan countered. ‘The authorities here do not look on your particular goods as acceptable.’
‘Of course. Which is why we must charge much more for our goods than the basic production costs. Risk is a costly extra.’
Kwan nodded, then went back to perusing the price list. ‘Actually, it’s more likely that we will purchase a smaller amount. At least for the first few deals. We want to be sure that our customers are willing to take this risk themselves, and also that we can sell everything we get from you.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll be having no problem there. It is a very popular product. And, of course, forbidden fruits always taste more sweeter, isn’t it?’
The only immediate reply from the Nurdi-Kwan duo was matching smiles. After a few moments, Kwan nodded to Nurdi and turned back to his supplier. ‘I think for the first consignment, we would be looking at 200 kilos. If the uptake is there, we can increase the amount on further purchases.’
‘As you wish,’ Lok replied.
‘Now, about the price. I think we would be most comfortable with $50 a kilo less than what you have listed here.’
Lok looked like he had just swallowed a large bullfrog. He coughed and took a deep gulp from his teacup. ‘Fifty dollars less. That’s quite a reduction.’
‘But I think that brings us to a fair price. Something we can all be happy with.’ Kwan then added a smile to sweeten the challenge.
‘You seem to have a different way of viewing happiness, Mr Kwan. Fifty dollars a kilo less than our already generous offer is more in the range of a grimace than a smile.’
‘But the price you have here would cause us much unhappiness, Mr Lok.’ Kwan paused here and delivered a regretful sigh before continuing. ‘Only because it would cause our customers pain when we ask them to take on this product. Risk and the price we would have to ask might be more pain than our customers could bear.’
The two sides then stared at each other across the table in silence. When Kwan felt they had held that silence for just the right amount of time, he spoke again. ‘And on the subject of risk: I imagine that you have already brought adequate supplies of your product into Singapore.’
‘Of course. You can take delivery tomorrow morning if you like.’
Kwan raised a hand to slow Lok down. ‘You must then factor in the risk of taking all those boxes back across the causeway. The Singapore authorities will again give you a good going-over as you return to Malaysia. Surely the lifting of that risk should be worth at least $50 a kilo to you.’
On that note, the two sides slipped back into the exchange of silent stares. However, Krishnan Nurdi softly tapped his fist twice under the table to express his admiration for Kwan’s negotiating skills.
On his part, Kwan knew that silence was now his ally. He would wait for Lok to break it. Which he did barely twenty seconds later, accompanied by a forced smile.
‘OK. Yes, we can accept that price. But only for the first consignment! After that, we will need to have new negotiations and see what agreement we reach then.’
‘Of course,’ replied Kwan. ‘The whole picture will be much more clear then.’
‘So, my friends, we have a deal then? You will take 200 kilos at that giveaway price?’
‘Well, there is one other matter that we have to look at,’ Kwan answered. Lok’s smile vanished as quickly as a magician’s lit candle. ‘Oh? And what is that?’
‘The product itself.’
‘The product? I don’t …’
‘We want to be sure of its purity. In this particular line that you deal in, Mr Lok, there are many counterfeits. They come from places like China … Myanmar.’ At this, the two minders suddenly showed minimal shifts towards discomfort in their poker faces. ‘And these counterfeits are not of the same quality. They have problems—in taste, in texture, in strength. Sometimes there are even harmful additives used.’
‘Gentlemen, I can assure you that our product is 100% genuine. It all comes from the original source, not from some dirty shed in Burma or China. What we are offering is the real thing. Of that, you can be sure.’
‘So you say. But how can we be sure?’
At that moment, Lok shifted back very comfortably in his chair, a genuine, relaxed smile on his face. It was as if Kwan had just dealt him the last card of a royal flush. ‘Would you like to sample the product yourself?’
‘Sample?’ replied Kwan. He exchanged looks with Nurdi.
‘Yes. As my guests. It will be my treat.’ He then leaned forward, his folded fists stretched as far across the table as they could reach.
Kwan recovered and nodded confidently. ‘Yes. A very good idea. That should remove all of our doubts.’
‘Absolutely.’ Lok then signalled to the man on his far left, who hauled up a largish box heavily sealed with grey masking tape. The man then suddenly produced a cutter that looked like an appendage of one of the Transformer figures and started slicing along the top of the box. Lok turned back to his two guests.
‘You will see that we have brought along as samples a rich variety of what we are offering our friends and customers. We have more than one product in our product line, you know.’
The man with the cutter was just then completing his energetic slicing. As if on cue, the two suited fellows at the back had swung into action. One moved two steps closer to Lok himself, while the other glided around the table to an open area; both had their eyes fixed intently on the closed door. They had also placed tensed hands on their chests, close to the bulges under their jackets. It was clear that no unannounced visitors would receive a friendly welcome from these fellows.
Standing, Lok himself dipped both hands into the now open box. He was beaming all over. ‘Yes, you will certainly be able to judge our product from this sampling.’ He gazed into the box. ‘Let’s see … Yes, we have Juicy Fruit, Spearmint, Doublemint.’ He then pulled out a double-fistful of chewing gum packets. ‘And we even have here some of the more exotic flavours: Flare, Elixir, Lush, Zing, Cobalt. And … Hubba Bubba. So which would you gentlemen like to try?’
Kwan, staring at the wares in Lok’s hands, considered for a moment before answering. ‘Could I try both the Juicy Fruit and the Spearmint? I can make a good comparison and judgement with that, I think.’
‘Fine,’ replied Kwan. ‘I like your thoroughness, Mr Theodosious. And you, Mr Krishnan?’
‘Just the Juicy Fruit, thank you.’
Lok nodded, opened two packs of gum, then deftly slid out three sticks. He handed them to his assistant on the far end, who duly passed along one to Nurdi, two to Kwan. ‘Gentlemen, enjoy your chews.’
‘I understand entirely, Mr Kwan,’ replied Lok.
Kwan slid the double sticks of gum in and started masticating. Nurdi had meanwhile inserted the whole stick into his mouth and begun his own test. A minute later, Lok flipped his smile into high beam.
‘Mr Kwan—you chew that gum like an old master of the form.’
Kwan nodded. ‘When I was at uni, I studied for eighteen months abroad, in Australia. Me and my some of my friends spent a lot of our time and money chewing. Sometimes we would chew three or four times a day. It was ecstasy.’
‘And your customers will soon know that same ecstasy.’ He paused and lowered his tone. ‘That is, if we can come to some agreement here.’
Kwan glanced quickly at Nurdi, then back at his host. ‘Oh, I think we can reach an agreement now.’ He turned to Nurdi to signal that he approved. ‘But you can assure us that the entire shipment is like this: the best quality?’
‘Absolutely!’ shouted Lok. Kwan nodded, half-closed his eyes and began chewing more slowly, deliberately, savouring every squeeze of his teeth into the pliant flesh of the Juicy Fruit and Spearmint. It brought him back to his glorious student days in Oz.
From there, the three men managed to wrap up the whole deal within ten minutes. As they triumphantly shook hands, Kwan commended Lok for the efficiency of his operation. Lok smiled and took a slight bow. Nurdi asked if he could try a stick of Hubba Bubba before leaving, and Lok insisted that he take a whole pack along with him, as a gift, to celebrate their new business relationship.
Krishnan Nurdi was still chewing his Juicy Fruit as the two visitors made their way back down the staircase. Theodosius Kwan had removed his well-masticated wad of gum and put it in a safe place. He hand-signalled Krishnan to hide his before they stepped outside; Nurdi then swallowed the whole in one bold gulp. ‘I think,’ Kwan whispered to his associate, ‘we have just formed a business partnership that can really stick.’ Nurdi, choking slightly on the gum, could only nod.
The two stepped out into a brilliant shower of sunlight; not a hint of rain anywhere in the magnanimous Singapore sky. Theodosius Kwan turned to his now partner in crime, flashed a thumbs up sign and for five chomps mimed the energetic chewing of a contraband substance.
Krishan winked in return. If he wasn’t still struggling with the gum lodged in his throat, he would have added a hearty shout of ‘Hubba bubba!’ to that.
ALARIC LEONG is a proud Singaporean and aspiring author. Having worked as a PR writer, he decided to gravitate into a brand of fiction that hews a little more closely to reality. Another of his first attempts at fiction has been included in the Monsoon Books anthology, Best of Southeast Asian Erotica.
‘The Madman of Geylang’ by Zafar Anjum
Zul scratches his balls for the umpteenth time, but the satisfaction, the sedation-inducing contentment, of a well-scratched scrotum eludes him once again. He has been feeling this itch for God knows how many hours now, but the handcuffs have been making the exercise difficult. His hands are big and scruffy and the many years of cleaning dishes and mopping floor—his line of work ever since he was a teenager—has made them calloused.
He wants to feel his bum too—it must be sore, of a pinkish hue by now, like that of an orangutan, he thinks. But it’s impossible for his hands to reach his rear. He has been sitting on the floor of a ten-by-twenty room for hours, maybe even days, weeks, his hands cuffed, feet chained. He has no sense of time, he does not know if it is day or night, morning or afternoon, but he has felt spells of extreme cold and heat in the time that he has been trapped in this rabbit hole. It has been like a year of many summers and winters for him, the season changing every few hours, the change every time breaking something inside him. He has no watch, nothing except the rags of a prisoner on him. Like the four walls of the windowless room where he has been cloistered, his mind is blank and all he has with him is an image—the image of Melly.
‘Ah,’ he grunts, a sense of frustration making him twinge with rage. Then, taking his head between his hands, he lowers his body onto the floor and begins to sob. ‘Melly, Melly,’ he cries out loud, pulling his bristly hair with his cuffed hands. ‘What have I done, what have I done, Melly!’ His body moves to and fro, throbbing as he lets out his muffled shrieks. A rivulet of drool flows from a corner of his mouth.
A few minutes pass like this, then Zul calms down, half awake, half asleep, like a sedated animal in a cage.
In his state of delirium, memories of Melly come floating to him as if in a dream. Her plump, round face, her long dark hair, her big black eyes, her supple body with big, round, pendulous breasts envelopes his consciousness and as he tries to hold her in his imagination, she slips away like a ghost, like sand slipping through the fingers of a mirage-struck traveller lost in a desert.
The first time he had set his eyes on Melly was when he was walking back from work and she was standing in a playground in Whampoa. The playground was close to Spice Junction, an Indian stall in a hawker centre where he worked as a cleaner. She was chaperoning a five-year-old boy who was playing with other children. While the boy played, she talked to another maid who was standing guard over a baby in a stroller. Melly talked a bit loudly, at a faster clip and laughed heartily—the mark of a generous woman. It was her laughter that had attracted him. When she laughed, she threw her head backwards and her breasts arched out, like two huge cannon balls.
And the balls had struck him right in the heart—the seductive pallets arousing in him the cacophony of love, stirring him in a totally new way. Since that day, he had made it a point to pass through the playground and linger around it to take a good look at her on one pretext or another. Sometimes he would bring along a plastic bag and collect the fallen leaves scattered in the playground. On other days, when he felt tired, he would just sit on one of the benches among the old folks and pretend to play a game on his handphone, stealing glances at Melly as often as he could dare. It was a hopeless situation—why would anybody, even a maid, notice a short, snub-nosed, grizzled hair, thirty-year-old, good-for-nothing like him—but the sight of Melly was the only thing that gave him pleasure after a hard day’s work.
One day an impossible thing happened, just like his mother used to say. ‘Son, Allah has strange ways of doing things,’ she would say. ‘If you set your heart after something and pray to Him, asking for it, He would give it to you before you know it.’ And when it happened, it was incredible. He then had no doubt that his desire for Melly, verbalised in earnest entreaties to Allah in the Friday prayers week after week, had reached the skies.
That afternoon, Shekhar, his employer, had scolded him for being lazy in his duties and in a huff, he had left the stall, not caring for what the Indian chef thought of him. Soft and saturnine, he was a man with a weakness—his rage—and when it ballooned in him, he leaped out of his senses as readily as a cleanliness-loving man would discard his dirty pyjamas. In those moments, even he wouldn’t know what he would do. It was like a streak of madness in him. His mother had warned him against it, a madness that had chequered his career, walking him from one job to another over the years.
When he reached the playground, luckily there was no one around—only Melly and her ward in the leafy playground. There were no other maids and no toothless old men hanging around like hungry wolves gawking at young maids.
He was feeling depressed after having fought with his employer. He sat down on one of the wrought iron benches in the play station. Wearing a T-shirt and shorts, Melly was sitting on another bench, under the shade of a tree. Left to himself, the boy was jumping around the play station. As a mischievous ide
a came to the boy, his eyes glinted and he began to climb over the monkey bars.
‘Careful, Zack,’ Melly said as she sauntered towards the boy. ‘That is dangerous … stop doing that—’
Even before Melly could complete her sentence, the boy lost his balance and toppled over the bars. ‘Thwack!’ The boy’s body tumbled down to the ground, face down.
‘Zack!’ Melly cried, rushing to the boy. The boy didn’t move at all.
‘Zack, Zack!’ Melly shook the boy. She took his head in her lap and shook him by his chin, and gently tugged at his hair. No movement.
‘Zack! Wake up, open your eyes, Zack,’ Melly cried desperately. ‘Oh, God,’ she sobbed. ‘What do I do now?’
Horrified, Zul was watching all this from where he was sitting. Without a thought, he ran over to the boy. Hovering over him, he took a good look.
This was exactly what had happened to his younger brother, Zul remembered. Scenes from his childhood days replayed before his eyes. The only difference was that his brother had fallen from a tree in a kampung, his village which was no more, vanished under the skyscrapers of the Lion City. His brother had later died. He remembered the unforgettable words spoken by the most educated man in his kampung: ‘He would have lived if he had been brought to the doctor a bit earlier.’
‘Move!’ Zul shouted, pushing Melly away, ‘I know what to do.’ He felt the boy’s pulse, took him in his arms and began to run.
‘The doctor, the doctor,’ he said and sprinted towards the nearest clinic in the Whampoa market. The maid ran after him, panting. He did not stop running until he had reached the clinic. He put the boy in the doctor’s chamber and stepped aside.
When the boy regained consciousness after medical help and the boy’s mother came over to the clinic, Zul slipped away unobtrusively.
For the next few days, he did not go either to Shekhar’s food stall or the playground—he just slept at his mother’s place at Geylang Serai and gallivanted around the food stalls looking for cleaning jobs. His employer had not called him either. ‘Shekhar does not want me to work with him anymore, so why bother going to him,’ he thought.