“We can talk better here,” said Shuck on the launch Kachang. We climbed the ladder to the cabin roof and took up positions some distance from the tourists. Shuck looked back and said, “Hold the phone.”
A feller in a straw hat had crawled up behind us. He said, “Hi! Do me a favor? Take a picture of me and my wife? That’s her down there, with the hat. All you have to do is look through here and snap. I’ve set the light meter. Swell.”
“It’s not usually this crowded,” said Shuck, aiming the camera at the man and wife on the afterdeck.
“Thanks a lot,” said the feller, retrieving his camera. “How about a snap of you two? I’ll send you a print when we get back to the States.”
“No,” said Shuck sharply, and turned away and closed his eyes in an infantile gesture of refusal.
The Kachang’s engine whirred and pumped, and she leaned away from the quay steps. All around us a logjam of bumboats and sampans began to chug and break up, bobbing across our bow. Waiting behind a misshapen barricade of duffel bags and cardboard suitcases at the top of the stairs were six sunburned Russians, two stocky women with head scarves and cotton dresses, four men with Slavic lips, blond crew cuts, transparent nylon shirts, and string vests. One smoked a tubelike cigarette.
“Russkies,” I said.
“What do they want?” muttered Shuck.
“Going out to their ship,” I said. “Next stop Bloodyvostok, heh.”
Gray sluggish waves, streaked with garter snakes of oil slick, sloshed at the cement stairs, lapped at an upper step, then subsided into rolling froth, depositing a crushed plastic bottle on a step halfway down. A new wave a second later lifted the bottle a step higher. I watched the progress of this piece of flotsam traveling up and down the stairs — the stairs where small-toothed Doris Goh had stumbled and soaked herself, where my handsome girls boarded sampans in old pajamas and overalls and giggled all the way to the freighters.
It was late afternoon; the sun behind the customs house and maritime building put us in shadow that made the inner harbor all greasy water and dark vessels. But farther out, where the water was lit, purest at the greatest distance, ships gleamed and made true reflections in the sky-blue sea mirror.
“See that little jetty?” I said. “Years ago, I used to take gals out from it in little boats. There, where that old feller’s in the sampan.”
The old man in flapping black pajamas, his foot braced against a plank seat, stirred his long oar pole back and forth on its crutch, rocking the sampan through the continual swell.
“I used to worry. What if a storm comes up and blows us out to sea? We’re set adrift or shipwrecked. Makes you stop and think. You’d probably say, ‘Great, alone with some hookers on a desert island.’ But it would be fatal — you’d croak or turn cannibal. You’d be better off alone.”
“You’d still croak,” said Shuck.
“But you wouldn’t turn cannibal,” I said.
“I’m glad you made it today,” said Shuck.
“So am I,” I said. “God, I’m tickled to death.”
Shuck pulled a sour face. “The way you talk,” he said. “I can never make out if you’re putting me on.”
“Cut it out,” I said. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“At Paradise Gardens I used to see you rushing around, getting into a flap and think, Can he be serious?”
“I worried about those fellers,” I said. The Kachang was a hundred yards out; the tour guide had started his spiel. “That gray stone building over there is the general post office. One Christmas eve, about eleven o’clock, I stopped in to send a telegram for Hing. There were three Marines in there sending telegrams — to their folks, I suppose. I followed them out, and down the street. They headed over Cavanagh Bridge at a pretty good clip and I went after them. At Empress Place I was going to say something, wish them a Merry Christmas, offer them a drink, or take them around. I had some dough then — I could have shown them a real good time. But I didn’t do a thing. They went off with their hands in their pockets. I felt like crying. I’d give anything to have that chance again.”
The story made Shuck uneasy. “I thought you were telling a joke,” he said. “Don’t sweat it, Jack. The military takes good care of themselves.”
“It wasn’t that they were soldiers,” I said. “They were strangers. I had the feeling that after they turned the corner something awful happened to them. For no good reason.”
“You would have made a good — what’s the word I’m looking for?”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “There isn’t one. Anyway, what’s on your mind?”
“Hey, you called me, remember?”
“This harbor tour wasn’t my idea,” I said. “I just wanted to shoot the bull in your office.”
“You said we had some unfinished business.”
“Did I? Oh, yeah, I guess I did.” I tried to laugh. Shuck’s silence prompted me. I said, “I’m looking for work.”
“What makes you think I can help you?”
“You said you had a proposition. I told you I wasn’t interested. Now I am.”
“I remember,” said Shuck. “You told me to roll it into a cone and shove it.”
“A figure of speech,” I said. “I got a little hot under the collar — can you blame me?” I leaned close. “Ed, I don’t know what you had in mind, but I could be very useful to you.”
If he laughs I’ll push him overboard, I thought.
Shuck said faintly, “Try me.”
I was trembling. I was prepared to do anything, say anything. “See that channel?” I said. “Well, follow it far enough and you come to Raffles Lighthouse. Go a little beyond it and you’re in international waters. You don’t know what goes on there. I do.”
“What does that prove?”
“Listen,” I said, “smugglers from Indonesia sink huge bales of heroin in that water and then go away. Skindivers from Singapore go over and dredge it up. That’s how the stuff’s transferred — underwater. You didn’t know that.”
“That’s the narcotics division. Dangerous drugs,” said Shuck. “Not my bag.”
“Commies your bag? How about the Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Union on Bras Basah Road — what do you know about them?”
“We’ve got a file on them.”
“I know a feller who’s a member — pal of mine, calls me Jack. He makes teeth for my girls. I could show you the teeth.”
“Making gold teeth doesn’t count as subversion, Jack.”
“He’s a Maoist,” I said. “They all are. What I’m trying to say is I’m welcome in that place anytime. I could get you names, addresses, anything.”
“That stuff’s no good to us.”
“I’ll buy that — I’m just using it as an example,” I said. “Don’t forget, I’ve been hustling in Singapore for fourteen years. What I don’t know about the secret societies isn’t worth knowing. See those tattoos? I’ve learned a trick or two.” Shuck smiled.
“You look suspicious,” I said.
“You’re too eager,” said Shuck. “We get guys coming into the embassy every day with stories like that. They think we’ll be interested. Lots of whispering, et cetera. The funny thing is, we know most of it already.”
I tried a new tack. “Tell me frankly, what’s the worst job you can imagine?”
“Frankly, yours,” said Shuck. “I think hustling is about as low as you can go.”