9

RIDOUT ROAD

SINGAPORE

Astrid turned on her laptop and composed an e-mail:

She sent the e-mail, and one minute later, Charlie popped up on Google Chat.

CW: Hey! Happy to look into this for you.

ALT: Really appreciate your help.

CW: Any special reason why?

ALT: Trying to get some answers for myself. Have you heard of them?

CW: Yes. But doesn’t Michael know everything you’d need to know?

ALT: Apparently not. Do you know if they are fully owned or partially owned by some Asian conglomerate?

CW: What’s going on, Astrid?

Astrid paused for a few minutes, not sure whether she was prepared to get into it with Charlie about everything that had happened with Michael.

ALT: I’m trying to help Michael get to the truth. It’s a bit complicated…don’t want to drag you into it.

CW: I’m already in it. But okay, I won’t press further. But if you really want my help, it would be better if I had the big picture.

She sat on the edge of her bed, thinking, What do I have to hide from Charlie? He’s the only person who will understand.

ALT: Okay, here goes. Michael’s gotten it into his head that my father—or someone at one of the companies controlled by my family—actually bought Cloud Nine Solutions, using Promenade as a cover.

CW: Why would he suddenly think that?

ALT: Long story, but basically he came across some old papers listing the buyer as Pebble Beach Holding Company, and knowing how much my dad loves golfing there, he’s made this huge assumption.

CW: Sorry to state the obvious, but did you ask your dad if he bought the company?

ALT: I did. And of course he denied it. “Why the bloody hell would I want Michael’s company? I thought it was absurdly overvalued to begin with.”

CW: Classic Harry Leong!

ALT: Indeed.

CW: I don’t think your father has anything to do with this, but would it really matter if he does?

ALT: Are you kidding? Michael’s story has always been that he made it on his own. This suspicion that my family had something to do with his success is driving him up the wall. He thinks my father is trying yet again to control him, control us, etc. We had the biggest fight ever last night.

CW: Sorry to hear that.

ALT: I ended up leaving the house. It was either that or call the police. I’m now at the Marina Bay Sands hotel.

Fifteen seconds later, Astrid’s cell phone rang. It was Charlie calling, so she picked it up and mischievously answered, “Housekeeping?”

“Er, yes, I need someone to come deal with a big problem in my room right now,” Charlie responded, not missing a beat.

“What kind of problem?”

“These cake fetishists had a party in my room, and there are about thirty crushed cakes from Lana Cake Shop all over the carpet, smeared on the walls, on the bed. It looks like people have been rolling around in the cake and frosting, trying out different Kama Sutra positions.”

Astrid giggled. “Sicko! Where do you come up with this kind of stuff?”

“I was surfing the web last night and came across this article on people who get turned on by sitting on cakes.”

“I’m not going to ask what sort of websites you’ve been surfing in Hong Kong—no doubt ones that would be blocked in Singapore.”

“And I’m not going to ask why you’re sitting in a room at Marina Bay Sands, of all places!”

Astrid sighed. “There are very few hotels where I can be sure no one will recognize me. MBS is one of those—it’s mainly tourists.”

“No locals? Really?”

“No one I would know, anyway. When they first opened, my mother tried to go up to the SkyPark with Mrs. Lee Yong Chien and the Queen Mother of Borneo to see the view, but when they found out there was a twenty-dollar entry fee for seniors, Mrs. LYC said, ‘Ah nee kwee! Wah mai chut!’ So they ended up going to Toast Box in the mall instead.”

Charlie laughed. “You can’t change those women! It’s funny—my mother used to be so extravagant, but the older she gets, the more she seems to be turning into an obsessive tightwad. You know she won’t let her cooks turn on the lights in the kitchen until seven thirty now? I go over there and they are bumbling around in complete darkness, trying to make dinner for her.”

“That’s crazy! When we go to restaurants nowadays, my mum gets them to tah pow leftover gravy from the dishes. I kid you not. I tell her she’s insane and she says, ‘We paid for it! Why waste all this great gravy? Rosie can put it into tomorrow’s lunch and it will taste so much better!’ ”

Charlie chuckled. “So really, how long are you planning to hide out at the hotel?”

“I’m not hiding. I’m just taking a little break. Cassian and his nanny are with me, and he’s loving the SkyPark pool.”

“You know, the husband is the one that’s supposed to leave. Whenever I got into really bad fights with Isabel, I would either go over to my brother’s or get a hotel room. I couldn’t ever imagine making my wife and children leave the house.”

“Well, you’re a different species than Michael. Besides, he didn’t make me leave. I chose to leave. He got so angry that he began getting physical.”

“What? With you?” Charlie said in shock. I’m going to fucking kill him if he touched her.

“No, come on, Michael would never hurt me, but he completely trashed one of his Porsches. Took a samurai sword and began bashing the hood. I couldn’t bear to stick around and watch.”

“Damn! All because of his issue over who bought the company?” Charlie asked, getting more alarmed by the minute.

“It’s not just that. Things have been bad for him lately. He blew that deal with IBM, he lost the house he really wanted, there was this whole magazine article thing that I won’t even get into, and it seems like all we ever do these days is…” Astrid’s voice trailed off for a minute. I’ve said too much. It’s not fair of me to keep burdening Charlie like this.

Charlie could hear Astrid’s discreet sniffling away from her phone’s mouthpiece. She’s crying. She’s sitting in a hotel room crying.

“I’m sorry, it’s so inappropriate of me to be bothering you with all this when you’re at work.” Astrid sniffled again.

“I’m not really doing much today, but don’t worry, no one can fire me. You know you can call me anytime at all, don’t you?”

“I know. You are the one person who truly understands me. You know what I have to go through with my family. They don’t get what it’s like to have marriage problems.”

“Do you honestly think your brothers are perfectly content in their marriages?”

“Are you kidding me? I think they are all miserable in one way or another, but none of them would ever admit it. No one is allowed to be unhappy in my family. I think only Alex in LA is truly happy—he got away and got to be with the love of his life. It’s just pathetic that Salimah’s not accepted. So ironic, isn’t it, when you think that all the family money originally comes from Malaysia.”

“At least they make each other happy. That’s the only thing that matters,” Charlie said.

“You know, when I visited them a few months ago, I thought to myself, ‘I wish I could do this too.’ Sometimes I wish I could just pack a bag and move to California, where no one knows me and no one cares. Cassian can grow up far away from all the pressures he’s going to have to start facing very soon. And I would be perfectly happy, I swear to God, living in a beach shack.”

I could be too, Charlie thought to himself.

They were both silent for a moment, and then Charlie spoke up. “So what are you going to do?”

“There’s nothing to do, really. Michael will calm down in a couple of days and we’ll go home. If you can help me prove that my father had nothing to do with the acquisition of his company, I’m sure that will go a long way toward making him happier.”

Charlie was silent for a moment. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“You’re the best, Charlie, you really are.”

The minute he was off the phone with Astrid, Charlie placed a call to his chief financial officer: “Hey, Aaron. Remember the Michael Teo Cloud Nine acquisition back in 2010?”

“How could I ever forget? We’re still writing down the losses on that one,” Aaron replied.

“Why in God’s name did you name the holding company Pebble Beach LTD?”

“Dude, I was standing on the eighteenth hole when you called to tell me to buy the company. It’s the greatest finishing hole in the world. Why are you asking?”

“Never mind.”