After a period of consolidation, I did very occasionally drop in at the club as I wanted to see the changes to the place and also see how Neil was doing. He seemed a little heavier in build when I clapped eyes on him for what must have been the first time in perhaps six months, but he also seemed a little bit more confident and relaxed. He was able to hold a conversation a bit better now, whereas previously, and notwithstanding his liking of the ladies, he had sometimes given me the impression he’d rather be stuck in a good book and not speak to anyone unless he totally had to. He showed me around the club and pointed out the bars and the karaoke parlours. He explained how they worked, that originally Yusuf had been the one to come up with the idea and that they were serious money-spinners. I was a little concerned when I saw these, to tell the truth, and took the time to take Yusuf aside and grill him a little.
Yusuf explained security was tight around the club and the girls were all well looked after and under no pressure to do anything they didn’t want to do. I said that was all well and good, but I was more worried about Neil. I knew of his reputation for enjoying flirting with girls and told Yusuf I couldn’t be having that kind of carry on in the club. He assured me that Neil was pretty clean in that area, and he never dabbled with the staff or any customers in that way and the only liaisons he did enjoy were very discreet and never interfered with business at all. Back to the karaoke parlours, and Yusuf explained that Neil never really went near them but they were successful in as much as they were places where businessmen could bring their clients for a piece of almost innocent fun with no risks. I just nodded.
As our/my portfolio grew, I gave Neil more to do and so he was even busier. He was now charged with looking after apartment rentals and leasing in various areas throughout the city as well as looking for other opportunities. He provisionally proposed getting involved in export of textiles but I felt that almost all export deals involve too much unpredictability and so opportunity for things to go wrong. I preferred to deal more within Indonesia as I am a creature of habit and I know Indonesians. I know the fears, interests, needs, desires and foibles, of us Indos, whether indigenous or otherwise, and so I decided to stick with what I knew and soldier on accordingly.
Taking a stake in the palm oil business was another possibility put to me by Neil, and again while I was impressed with his proposal and the way he was thinking outside of the box, I turned this down too, Now, why did I, by now a hard-nosed businessman, reject what could have been a rather lucrative deal? Well, as daft as it sounds, I did so on moral grounds. The palm oil business is responsible for the destruction of rainforests in both Indonesia and Malaysia at alarming rates and, while I am certainly no dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist, I do believe we should take a degree of care of the world around us, and certainly not look to profit from its destruction. I know that such a view is far from universal in these days of get-rich-quick, and may even be seen as slightly hypocritical coming from me bearing in mind some of the strokes I’ve pulled in my time, but there you go.
No, Neil was doing fine and I was quite happy with him until one unfortunate incident after he’d been in charge of the club for some time, and not totally unsurprisingly it had its origins in the karaoke parlours. Neil and Yusuf had explained to me that the girls there were little more than part of the scenery and were definitely not for sale. There were safeguards in place, supposedly, to ensure both their safety and that of customers, as well as the name and reputation of the club itself. On this particular night, however, these best-laid-plans all somehow went astray, and we were left with a potentially disastrous scenario.
It seems it all started when a group of perhaps four of five guys turned up at the club a little worse for wear and demanded entry. Now, ordinarily anyone in an inebriated state would be refused entrance and turned away, but on the night in question the door was being manned by a couple of newer doormen, and they were perhaps a little intimidated by the government civil service uniforms these guys were wearing, and so let them in when more experienced staff would have been braver and known better.
The gentlemen ordered drinks and then moved into the karaoke area of the club where they were confronted by Neil. According to Neil, he was perfectly polite and respectful in explaining that the rules of the club did not permit intoxicated customers onto the premises, and so he would have to insist the gentlemen undertook certain guarantees that they would act in an appropriate manner if they wished to stay. The civil servants evidently took Neil’s words in good humour and assured him they would behave accordingly.
All went well for an hour or two, with the men ordering some food and drinks and enjoying the fairly innocuous company of the hostesses, when it seems things started to go wrong. One of the hostesses, a girl named Devi, left the room and complained to Neil that she was feeling uncomfortable in the presence of the men in the karaoke room. They were, she said,
