Singapore Noir

“Why didn’t you call the police immediately?”

Why didn’t he? After the initial shock, the initial fear, he continued furiously cleaning the cab, trying to get the damned stink out and knowing it would be days before the smell completely left. But he was also suddenly alert, completely aware of the thing that now sat in the passenger seat. And the longer he waited, the less willing he became to make that 999 call, even though he knew it was the only sane thing to do. What if its owner came looking for it? Would they kill him for it? But how would they find him? Every fare had been a roadside pickup. There had been so many — and many had been short trips. Anyone could have left it in any cab. And he realized after a while that he was looking for a reason not to call the police.

After cleaning the cab, he had sat down in the driver’s seat and cleaned the gun very, very gently, wiped off all the puke, then carefully felt around it until something gave a little, then unlatched the cylinder and let it fall open. He still had not put his finger on the trigger or his hand around the grip. There were five chambers and four were filled. He tilted the gun slowly and the bullets slid out, clicking against each other as they dropped into his open palm. Four of them. He lay them on the passenger seat and continued cleaning the revolver.

With the bullets out, he felt safer with his gun. He spun the cylinder then snapped his wrist sideways to close it — just as he remembered from the movies. He put his hand around the grip, touching lightly on the trigger, pointing it at the floor, and a little red spot of light appeared between his feet, between the accelerator and the brake. He jumped — then realized it was just a laser spot, just like the laser pointers he had once used at training sessions when he still had his old job as maintenance supervisor. Before he had been replaced by a foreign talent from China willing to do the same job for less money.

“Did you know it was a police gun?”

No, he had not thought about it. His gun was all black and he vaguely remembered police guns having some sort of wood grip. His had black rubber. He shook his head. He had not even known that police guns had laser sights. All he had been thinking about was how he was going to keep it concealed at home and when he was out. There was nothing in his room that could be locked — not the drawers, not the cupboard. Until that moment, he’d had nothing worth securing. He dropped his takings into a cash deposit machine every morning before he began to pick up fares. He did not even own a watch. There was a clock on the dashboard. He had a cheap Nokia phone, the kind sold at petrol stations, and an M1 plan that cost just ten dollars without caller ID. He had three shirts, two pairs of trousers, four pairs of boxers, three pairs of socks, his money pouch, and a flight bag from a long time ago, when he and his former wife had gone on a Chan Brothers tour to Malaysia.

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.