Singapore Noir

That was an hour ago. Perhaps more. He did not know. They had taken his wallet, his belt, his phone, his door keys, the keys to his cab. He let his eyelids droop — not closing them completely, but enough to shut out the fluorescent light and leave a slit for him to see the dull gray of the tabletop before him and his own elbows, jutting thinly beyond the fraying short sleeves of his shirt. He was not cold, he was not hungry, he did not need to piss. There was nothing to distract him. He put his hands together, left fingers over right, the tips of his thumbs touching, hands forming a circle, as he had been taught at the meditation center. He could meditate.

The door swung open. The old man looked up. There was a guy in the standard civil service attire — white long-sleeved shirt, sleeves rolled up, dark pressed trousers, formal shoes that made no noise when he entered the room. He had a clipboard. Another man dressed just like him followed, and a uniformed officer closed the door behind them.

“Mr. Tan,” he heard the first man saying as he sat down. He nodded. He looked at the clipboard. There was some kind of form on it and they had already filled in his particulars, recorded probably soon after his arrest. They went through the items and he nodded or murmured yes to all their questions.

His name, Tan Seng Hock, his national registration identity card number, the particulars of his taxi driver’s license. His address at Block 533, Avenue 5 in Ang Mo Kio. Not his home, just a room he rented. His landlady was probably in another room just like this one with another pair of officers. He hoped she was all right. She was probably not taking this well at all. She had teenagers, two boys, one thirteen, the other fifteen. Still too young to be left on their own without a mother — or a father. He had tried, in a way, to be a good role model for them, to take them out like a father or uncle would have, helping them with their math homework. He had slept with their mother, but only once. She had asked him for money after that. Not money for sex, she was quick to add. But pocket money. The kind due to a girlfriend, a woman you fucked, over and above the rent. He said he could not afford a relationship like that. He knew where the money went. There was a Singapore Turf Club betting shop not far from their block, across the MRT train tracks, close to the Courts furniture place. She had left it at that and never brought it up again. Or mentioned sex again. He did not think so well of himself to ask. Besides, the rental was cheap and there were the boys to think about. He did not need a quarrel. Peace, that was all he asked for.

“Mr. Tan,” the first officer began again. The old man looked up. He already knew what the question would be. “Where did you get the gun?”

“It was in my taxi. I was cleaning the taxi. My last passenger vomited in the back.”

“Can you remember when?”

He nodded. How could he ever forget the night he found his gun? Half a year ago, on Christmas Eve. He had been driving at night, something he did not like doing, but he knew it would be busy. Besides, the boys didn’t want to do any more math homework. His last passenger was a white man he picked up at Clarke Quay; he had driven him to the man’s condominium on the East Coast, the Bayshore.

“Can you describe him?”

The old man shook his head. The passenger was tall, had brown hair in a short, stylish cut, and was dressed in a tight shirt and jeans. But he could not put a face to that memory. All white men looked the same to him. They only varied in height and body fat — and how much hair they still had left. He looked like any drunk white man, although he seemed quite steady when he got into the taxi. And it was six months ago. All he remembered was the man telling him he needed to puke, but there was no place to stop on the expressway and he had vomited shortly before the turnoff to his condo. The passenger had been apologetic and had given him a fifty-dollar bill and told him to keep the change to get the cab cleaned. The old man could still remember driving all the way home to Ang Mo Kio after that, his windows down, the sour stink of the puke still fresh in his mind. Tequila probably. He had found parts of a worm when he took out the mats. And the gun under the front passenger seat. The old man had dropped the revolver and it made a loud thud on the floor of the cab. He did not remember how long he spent just staring at it, listening to the wind rustling like spirits through the leaves above him. With the puke on it, it looked like a stillborn child and he did not dare to touch it at first. Then, without thinking, he dropped a wet cloth on it and picked it up. He realized his mistake as he wiped the muck off it. Any prints would have been wiped off too. And sitting there in his hand, with his prints, the gun had made itself his.

“I wrapped the gun in the wet cloth,” he told the officers. “I put it on the front seat and I cleaned the cab.”