The Big Boss

We called him Boss. Why? Maybe because he was very very much older than us and the fact that he had a lot of money. He first moved in into our neighbourhood after getting out of prison. Yes, he served time for smuggling. It seemed that boss knew no legal ways of earning money.

He was strange and violent. He had 3 children. The eldest one, despite toughened by the violent beatings by his father ended up gay. You would have taught that he would be a mean son of a bitch himself but not, he was gentle. The second one took after his father, a real rouge and a samseng. The youngest a girl, ended up a bitch.

His idea of a row with his wife involved the use of a chopper. I remember once there was so much commotion and shouting and screaming. Of course being the busy body neighbour that we were ( I was perhaps 12 or 13) almost the whole neighbourhood ran to his house. I could see from outside he was holding a chopper with his right hand and his left hand was dripping blood to the floor. He shouted in Hokkien "Lu ai see ah, lu ai see ah". His wife who was about 2 to 3 feet away looked at him in fear. Then suddenly he let fly the chopper, she screamed but the chopper missed her by inches. He turned to look at us and we ran away. After that we found out that prior to the incident, they had a quarrel and she smashed a bottle and ripped his left hand with it.

His idea of disciplining his children must not be known by the people in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. I once saw him hanging his 1st son to the gate with a rope tied to his hands and then beat life out of the boy. The second one once had both his hands tied. Using the untied length of string, he swung the boy a few rounds and then just let the string go. The boy went sprawling to the cement floor. Even his pet Alsatian was not spared his wrath. Once he was angry because it left poo on the cement floor, he lifted the dog and smashed it to the floor. King, that was what he called it, ran away for good.

His daughter, once complained to him of receiving obscene phone calls so one day when the call came in, he went to his right door neighbour's house and called his left door neighbour who was an operator in telekoms. Before that he asked his daughter to play along with the caller. The neighbour managed to trace the call to a public phone about 2 kms from his house. He got into his car, sped to the phone booth and saw a boy talking. He caught the boy, stripped him naked and made him walk home.

When I was about 17 my friends and I befriended him. He was nice to us. He never left home without a few thousand ringgit in his pocket. He used to sponsor our parties with the condition that his son's are allowed to attend. We had no choice but to allow the brats to attend. I remember we use to gamble in a friend's house. We would take out about a few bucks each and he would boast and laugh aloud when he took out about 1K to gamble with us.

One more strange thing about him was one year he bred some dogs. Each of his dog had a cage and in each cage he installed a fan. His children were never given a fan in their bedrooms. He was the one who introduced us to blue-films. He had a collection of projectors and hundreds of reels of blue-films. One while screening in a friend's house, one of the customers took early leave and phoned the police. The police arrived and caught the friend who was incidentally a teacher. It made the news in BM. On another occasion, my friend who borrowed a few reels from him left the reels on a bicycle in his house. That night the police raided his house because they suspected that his brother was a bicycle thief. They found the stolen bicycle all right but with a bonus. My friend was remanded for a week. Boss bailed him out the same way that he bailed the teacher friend.

Then there was the time when he accepted 80K to carry drugs to KL. He paid another friend's brother to do it for 20K and pocketed 60K just like that. Then there was the story about the lady who paid him 2K to pour acid on another lady's face. He approached the other lady and told her that he comes to disfigure her face. He said he was paid 4K. She paid him 6K to not do it. He went back to the lady and gave back her 2K and said that he couldn't do it.

Now come to the part that I could never forget. One day we were taking in the teacher's house when boss' car suddenly screeched to a halt in front. He signalled us to get in. We ran to the car and got in and he sped off. We asked why and he said, his sister's bulldozer was just repossessed. After about 10 minutes he spotted the bulldozer. He drove to the side of the driver and told him to stop. The guy refused. He signalled the guy to pull over a few times but to no avail. Then he sped to the front, turned the car and stopped. The bulldozer had to use the giant scoop to brake. Boss took a truncheon from underneath his seat, went to the driver and gave the driver a hard blow square in his forehead. The driver a hunk of a man himself, staggered and bled profusely. We, in the car were shocked and scared stiff. Then boss got into the car and drove to the police station to make a report. We were still pale.

When I left for college, I seldom meet him and it has been about 30 years since I last saw him. Recently a friend told me that he is still alive but a lonely man. His wife left him a long time ago and his children do not want to have anything to do with him.