Chapter 12

The next night Rose brought her younger sister along and the three of us had a great time. Siew Har was new to the game so Rose charged me the premium rate. I was happy to pay it. It would seem strange that I would pay for their services when all I had to do was the command them to bend over, literally. The girls had to make a living and I wanted their services exclusively so I made sure that they did not moonlight on the sly. Put it down to an idiosyncrasy.

"For that kind of money I get to keep her for at least a week. Agreed?" "Agreed," Siew Har yelled, much to Rose's disgust.

"Haiyah! Do one time. Now want all time." I had a rollicking seven days with Siew Har, who demanded that I increase the size of my dong by stages until by the end of the week she was accommodating eight inches quite happily.

"Rose also take eight inches, Mr. K. But I new girl, so I win." I nearly had a seizure laughing myself silly. I took her to dinner at a sleazy restaurant which sold the best Chinese food in town. Some of the patrons were tong members. The tong are secret societies that control extortion, prostitution, numbers, horse racing, smuggling, and the protection racket among others. We exchanged polite greetings and Siew Har's esteem of me rose several magnitudes.

"Wa-a-a, Mr. Kaid, you big-shot, ah? That one 99 Gang tiger general, waaa," she told me in a stage whisper. The tiger generals are the war chiefs. Doing wet work and leading 'war parties' are part of their job description. I was on excellent terms with the Number 1 of the 99 Gang and these were his men. I had done the boss man a service once and he considered himself indebted to me. These guys took their obligations seriously.

Next day at the office, Mrs. Tan was waiting for me with a glint in her eye.

"You were AWOL for seven days, Mr. Kaid," she snapped, pronouncing it as a word 'a-wol.' Awol?

I shrugged and grinned. "Busy with this and that, Mrs. Tan. This and that." "I can imagine this and that," came the sarcastic rejoinder. "No, don't tell me. I don't want to know." Then came the payback and was it a good one, too.

"That woman has been here twice, looking for you," Mrs. Tan said with disapproval in her glare.

"What woman?" "The big, black one." That could only mean Cleopatra La Prince.

"She's not black, Mrs. Tan. A light cafe au lait, yes; black, no. You must not be racial." "Hah! Facts are facts. She's been looking for you." I never knew anyone who could put so much disapproval into a single 'Hah.' Now if it were Mandy then you'd see a different Mrs. Tan — Godzilla's sister with a sugarplum.

"OK, get her on the phone then. I'm sure she left her card or something." My curiosity was aroused. Cleopatra La Prince came on heavy over the phone.

"I have to see you again. Tonight. It's very urgent. Please." "Seven p.m. The Hilton lobby." She must have been there at least fifteen minutes early and she wore an old blouse and baggy jeans with a scarf and sunglasses. I was astounded. She was in disguise. I touched her elbow. She yelped and jumped.

"It's OK. It's only me, your friendly local vampire. I think we'd better cancel the dinner. I'll take you someplace else." I don't know why I said that. It could have been a small death wish, almost a desire to come out into the open where exorcists with their wooden stakes swarmed. When we were in the car she spoke. I gave her first prize for guts.

"Are you really a vampire? I thought you bit ... No, that's impossible." She could recall the night she spent in my arms but her mind wasn't willing to come to terms with her experience. I had also put a restraint on her not to talk about it.

I grinned at her, but without the fangs. What could she do about it? Phone the papers? "Hey guys, I was bitten by the Count last night and then we screwed our brains out." She wasn't altogether popular with the press either, and they weren't the only ones.

"Hey, come on. That's like saying I'm not alive. Un-dead is the word they use in the novels — graveyard stench, flesh rotting off my bones, mad-dog eyes, and all that shit." She laughed nervously and dropped the subject. I took her to that sleazy Hoe Peng Exotic Food Restaurant where they served wild animal dishes to order. You know the kind — squirrel, cat, dog, tiger's balls, marinated python, and even the odd cobra or two. The Chinese set great store on cobra blood in rice wine, which is 100 proof. They claim it puts a tingle in your dingle.

For Cleopatra's sake, I kept the order to conventional food. The dinner made her relax. I had brought along a bottle of very good white wine and that always goes well with Chinese food. I nibbled a bit here and a bit there and drank the wine. She didn't comment on my lack of appetite. When dinner was over I took her to the bungalow. She kept very quiet during the drive except to say that the dinner was fabulous.

I brought out some very old brandy and we sat in the glassed-in lanai. We could see the lights of the city in the distance. I kept the watch elementals away from the house.

"How did you come to work for Monkshood," she asked as an opener.

"Luck and timing I suppose. I was lucky to be in Monaco when the Direktor was there, and it just so happened he liked me and offered me the job. But we aren't here to discuss Monkshood." I really had been in Monaco when I dreamed up the Herr Direktor fiction. I thought at the time that it would camouflage my real role in Monkshood. Since then I have masqueraded as an employee, a trouble-shooter, and decision-maker with open-ended discretionary powers.

"So what's all this urgency about?"

"I'm in trouble, very serious trouble. There's even a possibility of the ISA being invoked so that they can put me away for two or three years. Can you help me? I mean Monkshood has a lot of clout, doesn't it?" "Politics is one area my employers shy away from. Herr Direktor is very explicit about non-involvement in politics. So you can forget about help from him. But tell me your problem anyway. I may be able to help." The ISA - The Internal Security Act - gives the Government the authority to put away any person for up to two years or more on suspicion that he is a security threat. The detention is arbitrary and evidence of wrongdoing is not required. The British enacted the law to fight the Communists during the Emergency of 1948-1960. After Independence, the elected government chose to keep the law and use it against all those they considered a 'threat' to the nation. For example, after 9/11 all known members of Jema'ah Islamiyah were held incommunicado until they were turned around. Jema'ah Islamiyah was directly involved in the Bali Bombing that killed 200 people.

"All right then. You know Datuk Feisal? Yes, he's a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Home Affairs. His teenage daughter is hiding from him." I was stunned. She didn't have to tell me the rest. I filled in the rest for her.

"And you're hiding her, right? Tell me you're not." I was aghast. This was trouble in capital letters. This woman went for trouble in a big way and this was the most. The affairs of ordinary people mean little to me and I usually ignore them as much as I can. I was about to tell her so when she continued.

"Yes, I am, and for good reason too. He has been raping her for the past six months and making videos of the rapes. That's not all. He has started on his younger daughter. The older one managed to escape. You can imagine the uproar if this became public." "No need for imagination, dear lady. The shit would really hit the fan. It would be something they would have to sweep under the carpet, and if they knew you had the girl, they would invoke the ISA. You have been a busy girl, haven't you? Isn't the Anti-Corruption Agency investigating this particular cockroach?" "They are, but he seems to have very powerful protectors." "And you have pricked them enough times for them to nail you with the excuse that you are a national menace if you go public on this thing. Received funding from the dreaded Zionists and so forth. So what do you want me to do?" "Help the child, Kaid. Please, help the child." It wasn't a joke. Cleopatra could be salted away until the heat cooled. [I don't really understand this expression. Since I don't I'm refraining from deleting the first two sentences of this paragraph which I'm not sure are to the point.] I would have refused if Cleo had asked me for help. But her plea on behalf of the child was something else. I began to respect this crazy woman. I began to see that her crusades were sincere and not for publicity. I had no idea why she thought I could help. Whatever the reason, she had elected me as one who could perform miracles.

"But why me?" I asked.

She shrugged helplessly. "I don't really know. It's just a feeling, I guess. I just know you can help me get the girl away to her mother." Her voice rose as she spoke. She was on the verge of hysteria. She was a strong woman, but matters were rapidly getting out of hand, and she knew that when push came to shove, she was on the spot.

Then she added in a faltering voice, "You made me do things the other night. It should not have been possible but you did." We were getting into dangerous waters.

"All right, keep calm. I'll see what I can do. But I think we'd better bring the girl here first. Where is she?" Cleopatra looked at me with uncertainty written all over her face. She wasn't sure the girl could be moved without being seen.

I patted her hand. "Trust me. I can best protect her in this house. Now where have you hidden the girl?" "She's with a friend," she told me in a small voice.

At least she had the sense not to hide the girl in her own house. She told me the address and I dialled Rose's mobile phone. She wasn't trawling for customers any more. With what I paid both sisters they had stopped working the streets.

"Wei? A-a-a-h, Meester Kaid. How are you? OK? Want to fuck, ah?" Rose had a one-track mind.

"Listen, Rose, I want you to go to this address and get a girl out of that house for me. You tell her you're from Auntie Cleo. Be careful, girl. People are looking for her and I don't want anything to happen to her. OK? Go and see Tai Kor Wong and borrow a car and get Fei Chai, Fat Boy, to drive it. No, you can't drive. You haven't got a licence. Say the man with big teeth wants to use it." I hung up.

The Tai Kor, literally Big Brother, was well acquainted with me. I did him a favour once and that indebted him to me for life. It was that kind of debt. Maybe one day, I'll tell the story.