TONY DUCKED below the dashboard, turning his body towards Mimi to clear the steering wheel and pushing Mimi down.
“Get down!”
But even as he said it he knew she would not understand.
“Hide!” he snapped.
She bent down and in the next instant a shot rang out. Their windscreen was shattered. Tony turned his head to look up. He saw the bullet hole in the centre of the windscreen. It would have missed them.
He put his foot on the clutch and shifted the gear into reverse, his head knocking against Mimi’s. “Help me. Hold the wheel straight,” he said.
He had pulled up on the road beside a van in front of her house. Tit was behind a pillar about three shophouses in front of them. His first thought was to get out of the car and take cover behind the van. But he saw that Tit was too close to them. He would open fire again as soon as the door opened.
He pressed the accelerator and let out the clutch. As the car moved backwards another bullet hit the car. He switched on the high beam hoping to dazzle Tit. A bullet crashed into the radiator and he heard the steam escaping. The next shot hit the right headlight.
Cold fear went through him. The shooting was no longer inaccurate. Tit was immobilising the car. The next shot hit the right front tyre. He speeded up, driving blind, relying on his memory that he had straightened out as he stopped.
He must be six or seven shophouses away now. The van and the other parked vehicles blocked Tit’s line of fire. A brief respite of a second or two then another shot hit the left front tyre.
“Six,” Mimi said. Tony didn’t reply. He thought it was a rifle. The windscreen was shattered. He put his head up, taking a chance that Tit could not see him through the shattered windscreen. Another shot hit the right mudguard.
Tit was standing in the carriageway now. As Tony looked Tit started running forward. In the rear-view mirror Tony saw they were in the middle of the road well away from the parked vehicles. A vehicle was approaching them at high speed.
He pressed the accelerator down. The car jerked backwards and the engine died. His whole body went cold.
A series of sounds rushed at him in the next second. Tit opened up with a burst of shooting. He must have seen the vehicle approaching. Mimi muttered, “O God!” A terrible screaming of tyres skidding on the road. A horn blaring out. He clenched his teeth. Then another shot rang through the air. It was a different sound from Tit’s gun.
He heard an upstairs window of a shophouse slam shut. Then a big man was by the side of his window hurling abuse at him in Cantonese at the top of his voice. There were no more shots. The man opened his door and caught him by his arm to pull him out of the car. He felt the glass on Tony’s shirt cut into his fingers. Only then he saw the shattered windscreen. His grip relaxed. The man looked down the road and uttered a curse. Tony could not see through the shattered windscreen. He put his head out of the car.
Tit was lying on the road with a rifle next to him.
“See loh! Dead!” the man muttered in a subdued shocked voice.
He heard a motorbike kick-starting and the engine roaring into life somewhere in the backlane behind Mimi’s house.
Mimi opened her door and got out. She put her hand to her mouth and gasped, “He’s dead!” in Cantonese.
Tony got out. His knees buckled under him, and he would have fallen on the road if the big man had not caught him.
“You O.K.?” Mimi asked.
He nodded. She turned and ran to her house. He saw her fumbling with the door key.
Lights went on in the upper floors of three or four shophouses. Silhouetted heads appeared at the windows.
The big man saw that Tony was standing steady. He released his hold on Tony’s arm, turned and walked briskly to his lorry, wiping his bleeding hand on his dirty dark-blue baggy trousers.
The lorry reversed and drove away round the car.
Tony’s head was throbbing with delayed reaction and blind anger. He stood rigid and stared at the body on the road. It moved. Tit tried to get up but collapsed into a heap with a groan.
No one came out of the shophouses. More upstairs lights came on. Dogs cowed earlier by the sound of gunfire earlier began to bark. He noticed then that the body was right in front of Mimi’s shophouse.
For the first time in his life the calm that had seen him through so many crises deserted him. He stood dazed with the gunshots still ringing in his ears. Out of his confused mind the thought that someone had stolen his bike came to him.
Traffic was backing up on the road now. Several cars had pulled up. People began to crowd round him. Someone asked him if he was all right.
“TONY! What in tarnation …”
It was Dymond. With a tall beautiful woman, blonde like Philippa, standing next to him.
He snapped out of his stupor.
“Mr Dymond. Please take me away. Now. Please.”
“Steady on, lad. An accident?”
“Yes … in a way …”
“Come on,” Dymond said.
“He’s covered with glass,” the woman said.
Dymond started to dust the glass off his shirt but the woman snapped, “No. I’ll do it.”
Tony started walking. Dymond put his hand on Tony’s back to direct him. And as he walked she dusted the glass off him with her handkerchief. They reached Dymond’s big Austin. He looked closely at Tony. “You hurt?”
“No. Just dazed with the shock of it all.”
“Get in.”
Dymond drove off with Tony in the passenger seat. The woman sat behind them. Dymond was silent until they passed the Ipoh Club, then he asked, “What happened?”
Tony just shook his head like a wet dog.
“Leave it, love. He’s still in a state of shock.”
Dymond drove to his house. He had never been there but he had allocated the house to Tony and knew the government quarters well.
The lights went on as the car drew up at the front porch. Gloria came to the verandah in her sarong and loose baju. Dymond jumped out of the car.
“Mrs Rosario?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Dymond. There’s been an accident. But Tony’s fine. My wife’s …”
He saw that she was looking over his shoulder at Mrs Dymond holding Tony’s arm as he got out.
Gloria rushed down the steps to him.
“No!” Mrs Dymond screamed at her. “He’s covered with glass, love.”
Tony took off his shirt in the verandah and threw it on the plank floor. Then he walked into the house. But he stopped at the door and said to Gloria, “Get Mr and Mrs Dymond a drink, darling. They need one.”
He came back as Gloria was putting the bottle of whisky and a bottle of soda-water on the small cane table in the verandah, wearing only his sleeping sarong, the top half of his body bare.
“Ice, Gloria.”
“Oh, don’t worry yourself,” Mrs Dymond said.
There was so much confusion. Meeting the boss’s wife and introducing Gloria to Dymond whom she had heard so much about. Asking them if whisky was all right. He had no beer but they did have some Port. Or a coffee?
And Gloria, her hair wild, in her sarong and baju.
“I am still so confused. I don’t know what really happened, Mr Dymond.” Three pairs of eyes were on him.
“I gave Wong a lift to his place in Menglembu in our new car. That’s the trouble with having a car. It’s not like a bike. You feel obliged to.”
“Get on with it, darling.”
“When I stopped where he told me to someone started shooting at us. I ducked down. So did Wong. There were so many shots. The lights. The radiator. The windscreen. Then another gun went off. And everything was quiet again. Then I saw the man lying on the road. The car must be a mess.”
“You’re bloody lucky,” Dymond said. “Unless …”
“What do you mean, love?” Mrs Dymond asked.
“Maybe they were gunning for Wong.”
“I reckon I was caught in some gang fight crossfire.”
Dymond looked at Tony and said softly, “I guess that’s what it was.”
“Shouldn’t he make a police report?” Mrs Dymond said.
“Oh. He can do it in the morning. I’ll ring Rick when we get home. What’s the time?”
“Eleven ten.”
“Bit late …”
“Well, first thing in the morning.”
“Is that all?” Gloria turned to Tony and asked, incredulous at such a short and simple explanation.
“I had a good look at the body,” Dymond said, after they had talked round it for a while. “He had a hole in the neck. Rather well dressed. Well, for a Chinese. And the gun lying on the road. A regular army three-oh-three. Odd. The secret societies don’t use rifles.” He turned to his wife, “So Rick says.”
“You’ve got glass in your hair,” Gloria said, looking at Tony.
“We’d better leave you to clean up …” Mrs Dymond said.
“Yeah. You’ve had a hard day, little man,” Dymond said, grinning.
A police car drove up to the house at eight o’clock the next morning. Tony was still shaving.
Gloria came into the bathroom. “Anton, a Malay policeman came in just now. He said he was sent to take you to the police station. He’ll come back in half an hour.”
Dymond must have telephoned the O.C.P.D. last night, Tony thought to himself. Or this morning.
“Ah, Mr Rosario,” the sergeant at the Central Police Station said when he walked into the chargeroom. He still had not sorted out what he should report. He was frightened.
“The O.C.P.D. wants to see you.”
He was led to the room with O.C.P.D. in large letters on the door. Officer Commanding Police District.
A square shouldered European with a small moustache stood up and shook his hand. “Mr Rosario. Sorry to drag you out so early, but we need to talk to you. Dymond spoke to me this morning. Do sit down.”
The O.C.P.D. looked him up and down before he spoke again.
He had a little smile on his face.
“Now, tell me,” he paused. “Why the hell, ahem, why the hell did you stop playing football?”
Tony laughed with relief. “That was years ago, Sir.”
“You were Malacca’s hope …”
“Oh no. I didn’t have speed. I missed so many chances because my kick was not so …”
“Poppycock!”
“And I broke my leg.”
“It’s interesting that you say you didn’t have enough speed. I watched you play once. I was amazed at your anticipation. Not just what the fellow in front of you would do. You seemed to read the whole field so well. Where every defender was moving to. But you are perfectly right. You lacked speed. So I thought.”
“Besides, I had to pass my exams.”
He saw sympathy in the man’s eyes.
“To business.” He sat back in his chair and continued.
“I’m going to play it straight with you, me lad. Because Dymond says you’re a plain decent sort.
“You’ve got mixed up in a curious business. We’ve been watching that man Tit. You know of course he’s the bloke who took a swipe at you, or rather tried to with a parang and you poked him in the tum-tum.
“He’s a commie. He tried to get the party to use the demolition of his shack as an example. And you as a running dog of the imperialists. They wouldn’t have a bar on it. Said he was becoming personal. But they’re well organised and on the ball. They suspected he would try to carry it off himself. Then they got the goods on you, Mr de Souza.”
Tony started at the name. The O.C.P.D. grinned.
“That’s a sort of Eurasian version of Smith, isn’t it?”
Tony had booked into the hotels with Mimi as Mr and Mrs de Souza.
“Naughty, naughty. However … We think they planted a man in the same shophouse as a tenant of the front room that your lady-love Mimi Tan stayed in. They knew Tit could get the same information from his ring of contacts. The most obvious thing to do would be to wait for you there. Cherche la femme.
“Tit was a good man to them. But he was a little too emotional. The business of avenging the demolition of his shack would be a test as far as they were concerned. They chastised him and lectured him then let him have his head.
“Their hunch paid off. Last night when Tit tried to get you their man was in his room. And it just fell into his lap. Tit was right there in front of the man’s window. Their man also had the luck of the very Devil himself. He hit him with one shot. In the neck. With an army service revolver. I don’t know if you know anything about guns, Mr Rosario, but that couldn’t have been plain skill. He was so bloody lucky.
“That’s what we think. It’s not a cast-iron thing. A lot of corroboratory evidence fits it. The motorbike taking off after the shooting. The new tenant. Someone got the number of a lorry which arrived in the middle of the shooting. We’ve spoken to the driver. Our Special Branch knowledge. It all ties in.”
The O.C.P.D. paused, opened his tin of fifties and offered Tony a cigarette.
“Thanks. But I don’t smoke.”
He lit one for himself and continued. “The good news as far as you are concerned, Casanova, is that we’ve put an embargo on the press. Not that the locals will get disturbed. The last thing we want to do is to let the Kuomintang … You know who they are?”
Tony nodded.
“The last thing we want is for the Kuomintang to think we let the commies get away with murder. They will know what happened. It’s very complicated. Sometimes I think the Special Branch is up the creek, but on this I’m with them. Nothing will come out in the press. And the reason I’m levelling with you is to warn you that you’ve got to keep your bloody trap shut.” He leant over the desk and waved a finger at Tony. “For your own skin.”
“Thank you, Sir. It’s a great relief. I will.”
“And that should teach you a lesson …”
“That it has, Sir.”
The O.C.P.D. sucked at his cigarette and let out a cloud of smoke in silence. “The Devil’s on your side. There were sixteen bullet holes in your car. But apart from the radiator and headlights and tyres and windscreen … there’s no real damage. Ha, ha, ha, ha …” He sat back and laughed at his own joke.
Then he stood up and extended his hand. “So. Shut your mouth and thank your lucky stars. I’m relying on that.”
The police car took Tony to his office. It was his design office day. A few minutes after nine Mimi rang.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yah. You?”
“O.K. Some small glass scratches only.”
“They’ve taken the car away.”
“I know. I’ve been down to the police station already.”
“They spoke to me too. Here, in my room. I told them I did not know anything. I suppose they said the same things to you. Did you know that the other fellow, I mean the second man, was in my house. In the front room?”
“Yah.”
“They told you?”
“Yah.”
“Lunch?”
“Better not. Listen, we’ve got to let it cool down. Also, I have no car. Until …”
“When will it …”
“Next week. Tuesday. As I was saying, we have to lay off for a while. It’s not as simple as you think.”
“I don’t know what to think, Tony.”
“Be patient. I’ll drop in to the … your work place when I can. O.K.?”
“Yah. Guess it’ll have to be.” Mimi sighed on the phone.
“Bye then.”
“Bye.”
He met Ng at a roadworks site near Batu Gajah the following day. Ng smiled at him knowingly and shook his head, “You are a lucky man …”
Ng pointed with his finger to a slope where no men were working and they walked there together in silence.
“The gang did not let me down. I knew they would not.”
“What do you mean?”
“They got their man to rent the front room at Mimi’s place.”
“That was your secret society …”
“Yes. They thought that’s where he would attack. The soft spot.”
“He got away? The police don’t suspect him?”
“No, they don’t.
Tony did not tell Ng what the O.C.P.D. had told him.
“But I found out something else. From my Kuomintang friends. And this is the real good news. It seems they had a man planted in the communists. He said Tit was getting too emotional. He kept bringing his revenge thing up over and over again. So they told him to go and fix it himself. They would not help as it was a personal business. If he had killed you, they would have tipped off the police. It was the party gun, of course.”
He did not meet Mimi for nine months. He missed her but it was not with the hollow longing of a crazed lover. It was like missing Phil, or Ma and Pa when they went to Ipoh. She telephoned him now and then. She said she missed him but did not seem desperate. He sighed with relief every time he put the receiver down after speaking with her. He had dreaded her reaction to a separation and had imagined emotional scenes.
As Alfonso was just under a year old, Gloria’s Ma decided Gloria needed her, and both Mr and Mrs Foenando moved into their little house about one month before the baby was due. He argued with Gloria when she told him that Saturday afternoon.
“There’s no earthly need for them to come so early,” he said as they were driving to church on Sunday. Gloria sulked right through mass. And she brought up the old one after mass on their way home about when he was going to go to confession. He had stopped going to Holy Communion after he met Mimi.
Eva Maria Rosario arrived on time and delighted Gloria and Tony. They had a complete family now. They couldn’t decide who she took after. He wrote out the cable to Ma and Pa and the family in Malacca with much excitement and joy in his heart.
Mrs Foenando was a godsend. He had forgotten how much cleaning and burping and waking up at nights Alfonso had needed. Foenando too was wonderful. He took Alfonso over completely. But he ate like a horse and Gloria’s marketing expenses shot up. They had to give the servant girl something extra too because of their house guests. It was the regular thing to do.
He lost all his authority over the little rascal Alfonso for two months and it was a terrible month for both of them when the Foenandos went back to Malacca.
A week after the christening, Ng invited Tony for a drink at the F.M.S. bar after work. What he had to say came as a complete surprise to him.
Ng offered him a job with his contracting firm. The pay was fifty percent more than what he was getting, and there would be a bonus every year at Chinese New Year. The only thing about that, he thought to himself as Ng talked, was that Chinese New Year came after Christmas.
Last year he had paid his men three months, Ng said.
Tony’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. He didn’t say anything. Ng smiled when he saw Tony’s reaction.
“But it depends on the business, of course,” Ng added.
Then he spoke of his longer-term plans. He was ready to grow really big. “Maybe one day as big as Gammon’s,” he said, and they laughed at the ridiculousness of it in good humour.
Then Ng leant over the table and looked deep into his eyes and said in a slow whisper, “If you are as good as what I think you are, I’ll make you a partner.”
The offer was too good to refuse. He took Gloria into the privacy of their bedroom, away from the Foenandos, to discuss it with her. She didn’t like it initially.
“We will have to leave these beautiful government quarters. And there’s no pension, darling.”
Tony convinced her the money would compensate for all the benefits of government service. It was a hard decision.
They told the Foenandos after Ng and Tony had agreed and worked out the details.
“No one in his right mind leaves the government service, man,” Foenando said with emphasis.
“You cannot work for a Chinese,” Mrs Foenando said.
Tony reminded himself of Foenando’s advice when they first got married, many years ago (was it only two?). “Never, ever take a loan,” he had said. “Never even take anything from the provision shop on the kera, on tick,” as though it would be a mortal sin to do so. Shit! The whole business world relies on loans!
They found a bungalow in Pasir Puteh that was just as nice as their government quarters.
“But the compound is so much smaller,” Gloria said.
“We won’t have to pay the gardener and the maids (they had two now) so much to keep in line with the other government servants,” he countered. “And don’t forget that bonus.” It became his regular reminder when Gloria compared the new house to their former quarters.
About a month after he started working for Ng he was driving to the office from a new roadworks site when he stopped at the traffic lights at the Tambun Road-Kampar Road junction. As he waited for the lights to change the familiar prickly feeling crept up his neck. He felt something was going to happen. But it was a different feeling this time.
When he reached the office, he got himself a cup of Chinese tea from the big porcelain container and sat at his desk in the tiny cubicle that was his personal office. He tried to recollect the feeling he had experienced at the traffic lights. It had something to do with the place, he felt. Not with me. He tried to concentrate.
Ng walked in.
“Hey. What’s the matter? You look as though you have real problems.”
He put up his right hand to silence Ng and continued frowning.
“Hoi. I pay you to think, man. But not so hard.”
“Ssshhh.”
Ng stared at him. He felt uneasy.
Then Tony’s face lit up as though a great weight had fallen off his shoulders. He pointed a finger at Ng and stuttered, “The, the, the Turf Club … That’s it. Four o’clock.”
“Hah?”
“Listen. The four o’clock race this afternoon. Coolie is going to win.”
Ng sneered and said, “Cannot. He’s carrying too much weight.”
Tony was excited. “I know.”
Ng frowned. “Hey, young man. Don’t you get into gambling. It’s the worst vice of all. Far worse than women or drink. Because there’s no natural limit.”
His words aroused Tony.
“Mr Ng,” he started off in Cantonese to get the man’s full attention, and then went back to English, “I tell you … I was born with something special. Now and then I can see the future. Not very often. Many years ago I broke my leg playing football. I knew when I got up that morning I would break my leg …”
“Then why did you play?”
“Because … because I cannot stop the future. I only see it. Sometimes. And that day when the bugger shot at me, I knew something was going to happen when I stopped the car. That’s why I ducked so quickly. Something drew my eyes to the gun before he shot. I actually saw him before he shot. In the dark.”
Ng sat up. He was visibly shaken by Tony’s words. He stared at Tony in silence, his mouth half open.
“One more thing … You remember the day I pulled out a pile that was short?”
Ng nodded.
“I could almost see it.”
Ng looked almost fearful. They sat in silence for about two minutes.
“Gimme the phone,” Ng said softly to Tony.
“But don’t put too much on it. You don’t want to change the odds …”
Ng asked the operator for the number and started talking in Cantonese. He stopped once and asked Tony, “You? You want to put something on?”
“Yah. Twenty dollars.” It was a fortune to Tony.
“So little,” Ng spluttered, his faith a little shaken.
“That’s big, big money for me.”
“Win or place?”
“Win only.”
When he had finished talking on the telephone, Ng said, “But I never seen you at the races.”
“I never go. I don’t play the horses.”
“Don’t smoke also, huh?”
“Yah.”
Coolie won, paying a record dividend. A rank outsider.
Tony had forgotten about it. He had been busy on the telephone all afternoon because of the problem of an unexpected limestone outcrop just below the surface of the ground on the roadline. He knew it would cost far too much to cut it out manually. It had to be blasted out. He had to find someone who could do it. At a reasonable price.
Ng walked into the office as he was talking to Thang, the quarry man. His demeanour was strange. Tony glanced at him and his mind went back to the telephone conversation. The dividend must have been lousy, he thought. Not for a moment did he think Coolie had lost.
“Tony.”
“What’s the matter? Didn’t you win?”
“Yes. I won. We both won.”
“Then smile, man.”
“Yah. I should. But, honestly. It frightens me. Oh, I mean … How to say … To prove that … er …”
“I cannot do it all the …”
Ng put up his hands. “I know that … But to have the gift … You are blessed by the gods …”
Clearly Ng was more awed than pleased with his win.
“You put a lot of money …”
“That night … with Mimi Tan, also you saw …”
“Yes.”
A weight seem to fall off Ng’s shoulders.
“You don’t see her any more?”
“No. For the time being. After that shooting …”
“Like that, huh? Temporary?”
“Yah.”
“She asked about you many times. She knows we work together.”
“Ah. You told her.”
“Yes.”
“Tomorrow we get our winnings. We go there, O.K.?”