The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook

by Nury Vittachi

  There was silence in the room. Nobody dared to move a muscle. Wong had spoken the name of the publisher of the newspaper, a scary individual who once sacked a senior staff member for misspelling the name of the Ong family dog.

  ‘So now we decide what is the real story,’ the feng shui master continued. ‘Fact is, Mr Ong does not like his friends to be embarrass in the newspaper. He has certain loyalty to them. But he has no direct contact with editorial staff. So he ask someone else to make sure these peoples’ names do not appear in gossip column in negative way. He ask person who stands between board of directors and reporters. This man is chief editor.’

  Every eye turned towards Ferdinand Cabigon.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ said the editor. ‘There’s no censorship in this newspaper. No more than in any other newspaper, anyway. I have complete freedom from the proprietor and make my own decisions. He has never interfered, not once.’

  Wong continued. ‘So editor had series of little interviews with chief gossip columnist of the paper. He tells her if she wants to keep her comfortable little job and big pay packet, she better be very careful to not mention name of any of proprietor’s friends. Gloria she say, okay. But she feel very bad. Other reporter in other newspaper write about them. But not her.’

  ‘This is probably true,’ the sports editor said. ‘Her column did seem to get very tame in recent months.’

  ‘Shh,’ Santos scolded him, his eyes fixed on Wong.

  After some time, Gloria worry this will be noticed. She decide she will not censor herself any more. She tell editor she will no longer keep proprietor’s friends out of column.’

  ‘This is crazy,’ Cabigon objected, becoming red in the face. ‘All make-believe from beginning to end. I think you better leave now, Mr Wong.’

  The feng shui master held up his hands. ‘Not finish. Ms Del Rosario and editor have big fight on Friday. Editor sacks her. She tells him she is more happy to leave job than to stay in job and censor herself. She say she will write her last column that night.’

  The editor had begun to sweat profusely.

  ‘Before her column go to sub-editor and layout desk, editor reads it,’ Wong continued. ‘He sees it is confession. Confession that she censored herself. Because editor ask her to. Her column destroys her reputation. But also it destroys his reputation. On Friday evening —’

  Ferdinand Cabigon rose to his feet and shouted at the visitors. ‘That’s enough. This is slander. You and your crazy friends will get out right now.’ He tried to speak with authority, but his voice shook. He turned to his staff. ‘Throw him out.’

  Boy Santos Jr rose to his feet. ‘I’ll throw them out. But first I want to hear the rest of what Mr Wong is saying. About what happened on Friday evening.’

  Journalist and editor stared at each other.

  Cabigon opened his mouth. ‘I —’

  Santos interrupted. ‘Free speech. Isn’t that what newspapers are all about? Sit down,’ he ordered. ‘Boss.’

  The reporter looked to his colleagues for support. Several of them nodded.

  Cabigon reluctantly took his seat.

  Wong continued: ‘So editor call her to executive office on top floor—he says he wants to give her goodbye gift. She go upstair with him. He asks her to wait. Then he run downstair. He type suicide message on her keyboard to him. He clicks “send” button. He rush upstair to executive floor. He take her up to the roof to show her something—then he push her off. He goes to executive toilet to wash his hands, make sure no fibre from her clothes on him. He goes downstair back to his desk.’

  There was a scraping sound. Ferdinand Cabigon had pushed his chair back again. All eyes turned to him. His face was wet and his eyes staring.

  ‘Stay,’ Santos said.

  ‘Soon, body is found, splat, dead on ground,’ Wong continued. ‘Many photographer, reporter, they run downstair, out of building, have a look. They see Gloria is dead. Mr Santos he run upstair and run into editor’s room to tell him Gloria dead. At that moment, editor press send-and-receive button and receive her final email. He reads it, pretends to be very shocked.’

  Cabigon shrieked at Wong. ‘There is no proof of this. There is no proof of this at all. It’s just a wild story. She never wrote any final column. What you’ve said is pie in the sky.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ The quiet voice came from his secretary, Baby Encarnacion-Salocan.

  Everyone in the room turned to stare at her.

  ‘Gloria thought you might just delete her final column, so she sent an extra copy to me. I kept it. She treated me decently. So did Mr Wong and his assistant. So I printed it out and passed it on to him.’

  Madam Xu clapped her hands. ‘So that’s how you worked it all out. Damn clever of you Wong. I thought for a moment that you must be psychic, to know so much detail about what happened. But you had the full story from the victim. That’s cheating, Wong.’

  Santos rose to his feet, and with the help of the business editor and the sports editor—the two bulkiest men in the room—escorted Ferdinand Cabigon back to his office, where he was incarcerated until the police could be summoned.

  Back in the conference room, Wong was defending himself from Madam Xu.

  ‘Column of Gloria did not tell me everything. Just bit about how editor ask her to censor herself. How she decided to leave job instead.’

  Joyce leaned into the conversation. ‘But how d’you know about how he pushed her? She couldn’t have written all that down. And how come you suddenly know how to send emails?’

  ‘How to do email I don’t know. Baby told me all that stuff. I just repeat it.’

  Ms Encarnacion-Salocan bowed her head. ‘I was sitting outside the editor’s office the whole time. I saw him rushing in and out. I checked the send and receive times on Gloria’s intra-office emails. Remember, I’m the editor’s secretary. I have top level clearance. It was easy for me to work out what had happened. Gloria was my best friend. She confided in —’ The woman burst into tears.

  Madam Xu was still annoyed with Wong. ‘You had too much help. This doesn’t count.’

  Boy Santos Jr re-entered the room and turned to the visitors. ‘Thank you for your help.’

  ‘Thank you is very nice,’ said Wong. ‘But we still get paid I hope?’

  ‘Don’t know. Cabigon signed the contract. If what you say is true, and he gets arrested, the owner might nullify things he signed. Especially as you make him look bad. Hard to say.’

  The feng shui master looked depressed.

  Joyce’s mind was whirling with the excitement of the past days: a murder, an investigation and a spell in jail— she felt bonded with Santos. ‘What an amazing three days. I never realised being a reporter was such a complicated and exciting job.’

  Santos smiled at her. ‘It can be. But sometimes it all seems to go out of control.’

  ‘But even then—I mean, it’s amazing how you always find the right thing to put in the paper.’

  The investigative reporter sat down next to Joyce. ‘Thanks, Joyce. But you know what? For the first time since I started this job, I have absolutely no idea what we should be putting on the front page tomorrow.’

  At Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Wong peered at the piece of bread that Madam Xu had purchased for him as a snack. Joyce was in the airport CD shop.

  ‘This is what?’

  ‘Authentic French cuisine, according to the table d’hôtel,’ she said.

  ‘Looks funny.’

  ‘Adobo Croissant, it’s called. Try it.’

  He took one bite—and then set it aside, wiping all traces off his lips with his napkin.

  ‘Not hungry,’ he said.

  ‘Me also,’ said Madam Xu.

  The case had been interesting, but the two Chinese mystics were still depressed about how wrong they had been when examining Gloria Del Rosario’s apartment. How could two so-called experts in the predictive arts have missed something as large as the imminent death of their subject?

/>   ‘I’ll buy you a much better snack, Mr Wong,’ said a voice.

  They looked around to see Baby Encarnacion-Salocan. The editor’s secretary sat down, explaining that she needed to tell them something before they left the Philippines.

  She told them that she had been miserable for the past six years, working for a wily and increasingly untrustworthy boss. She had desperately been seeking changes in her life, and wanted to quit the newspaper and start working independently.

  ‘I vacated my flat and moved in with Gloria three months ago. When she said that she was entitled to a free session from a top feng shui expert from Singapore, I asked her to accept,’ she said.

  ‘So birthday was your birthday, not birthday of Gloria?’ Wong was wide-eyed.

  She nodded. ‘Gloria accepted Mr Pun’s offer of a free feng shui and astrological consultation, but she gave you guys my birth date instead of her own. That home office area was mine, not hers.’

  Madam Xu, shocked, put her fingertips to her lips, barely daring to believe her ears. And that handprint . . . ?’

  ‘That was my hand,’ said Baby.

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘So when you both predicted that the apartment’s inhabitant would enjoy a full and rich life, you were talking about me, not poor Gloria,’ Baby continued. ‘I’m sorry to have deceived you. I couldn’t have afforded to employ you myself. It was because of the lies Gloria and I told that you got mixed up in all this.’

  Madam Xu was stunned. ‘So I have not lost my abilities after all,’ she gasped. ‘And Mr Wong the same. We got it right!

  Thank you for the best news we have had in days. That news earns you a big kiss and a hug.’

  The two women clutched each other tightly.

  Wong looked alarmed and slipped away.

  Epilogue: Letters

  from friends

  Feng Menglong was a sage who lived in recent times, four hundred years ago. He wrote a book called Zhinang.

  In his book he said men always strived to have easy lives. If any obstacles came their way, they would get off the path of righteousness.

  Feng Menglong wondered why Heaven made it so difficult for men to attain enlightenment. While he was thinking about this, he encountered an example of the problem.

  One farmer of his acquaintance wanted to study and reach enlightenment. But his land was too dry that season and he had to spend every day carrying water to it.

  The farmer said: ‘I would study and acquire wisdom and become enlightened if I did not have so many troubles in my life.’

  The difficult times continued. The farmer carried water every day and forgot his pursuit of the truth.

  But other people in the village continued to study and seek enlightenment. Their fields became dry and dusty and the soil was blown away by the wind. The farm became a mound of lushness surrounded by baked hollows.

  Then one day, after a long drought, the rains came.

  The water sprinkled the mountaintops and ran down the sides. The water filled the deep hollows of the land.

  Feng Menglong saw that the lowlands had much more water than the plateaus.

  He realised that a life with highs and lows is richer than a life with only highs.

  Blade of Grass, learn from the words of Shanneng, a Zen master during the Southern Song Dynasty. He said: ‘When hardship is over, we look back and discover a certain joy in it. But if you can discover the joy while the hardship is happening, your winter will be as filled with as much wonder as your summer.’

  From ‘Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom’

  by CF Wong, part 33.

  CF Wong sat at his desk and flicked through his invoice book. It had been a busy month, and he had not had time to sit down and go through his accounts for several weeks. Things were looking bad. He phoned his patron, Pun Chi-kin.

  ‘Wah, Pun-saang, so much properties this month, in so many different country. I think three trip in one month too much, cannot do good job, always too much hurry-hurry, no time for my other work, aiyeeah, big problem.’

  ‘I have every confidence that you can cope, Wong.’ The property developer’s voice was smooth and velvety on the surface, but was there just a hint of iron underneath?

  ‘Also, some job very difficult. Not easy. Take many days.’ The feng shui master tried to avoid a note of pleading, but it was difficult. ‘Maybe we look again at my retainer, Mr Pun, see what is suitable fee, can-or-not?’

  Mr Pun gave a low growl in response. After a few seconds, he continued: ‘I realised you had a lot of work this month, visiting the board members, Mr Wong, but I thought you would be grateful. I know you never miss a chance to hit clients with extra fees for extra services. No doubt you lined your pockets, as you normally do.’ There was metal in his tone—not iron, but something harder and more dangerous: tempered steel.

  ‘Oh no, sir, no-no-no. Your board members get free service, everything included. Only sometime they force me to take extra money, I say no-no-no, don’t want. But they force me. Bad face for them if I say no.’

  ‘Ye-es.’ Pun was sceptical. ‘Whatever. Anyway, I have certain concerns about the way you carried out some of the assignments this month.’

  Wong froze. ‘Oh. I do something wrong, boss?’

  ‘Mr Wong: One of my board members is dead and another is out on bail on charges of fish-theft. This makes things awkward. I accept that you had no direct involvement in the death of Ms Del Rosario, but I cannot say the same for your role in the arrest of Mr Tik.’

  ‘Ah. Mr Tik.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Tik.’ Pun gave a long sigh. ‘If, in future, you discover business people related to my company are engaged in wrongful acts, it would be wise to quietly forget what you see, do you understand? Or at least, tell me about them before you tell the police. I’m a conservative man, and I like things to go on exactly as they have for many, many years. Arrests of board members are awkward and unpleasant for me. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Pun.’

  ‘I am deducting a certain sum of money from your monthly retainer this month to help you learn that important lesson.’

  The words were like a knife in Wong’s stomach. He sat down heavily.

  ‘Still there?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Pun.’

  ‘Now, you say you want a review of the overall level of your retainer?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Pun.’

  There was silence on the other end of the phone. It seemed to go on for a long time. When Wong had begun to wonder if the line had gone dead, the businessman came back. ‘I’m glad you asked. I’ve been thinking about reviewing the costs of your operation. After all, this is a period of heavy deflation, as you know. Deflation should be applied uniformly, I’ve always believed.’

  The feng shui master was suddenly alert. Deflation? What means deflation? Was this good news or bad? Must check, quick. Wong, with his free hand, quickly plucked his English dictionary from the bookshelf and started flicking through it. ‘Sorry, Pun-saang. Please wait. Urgent call on other line.’ He pressed the hold button, inflicting a monophonic version of Greensleeves on his chief paymaster.

  Finding the page, he read it carefully, his lips moving: ‘DEFLATION: Lessening of monetary value; economic condition in which money loses spending power resulting in a reduction of costs; the opposite of inflation.’

  Wong considered this, the space between his eyebrows screwing itself into a tight grid. Did this mean what he thought it meant? Money going down?

  Must act fast. He pressed the hold button again. ‘Maybe no need for review of cost jus’ yet,’ he said as pleasantly as he could. ‘Can manage okay jus’ now. Three-four trip oversea in one month no problem. Sorry about Mr Tik.’

  ‘Well, Wong, glad to hear it,’ said Pun, his voice dry and unamused. He rang off.

  Aiyeeah. The feng shui master crossed his arms and slumped forwards across his desk. After a minute, he jerked himself upright and reached for the bag of curried fishballs he had purchased as a late-afternoon snack.
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br />   But Winnie Lim was wiping her lips with a tissue, having scoffed the lot.

  An hour later, the geomancer was sitting at his favourite table at the night market. He had brought two books with him to provide cheerful reading: his invoice book and his receipts book. There was nothing more comforting than flicking through payment stubs.

  He smiled as he reached a group of stubs stamped with the word paid. He had seen three separately billed extra clients on the Australia trip—little old ladies from Perth who had wanted their homes feng shui-ed. There had actually been a fourth offer from that Mrs Lavender, but he had reluctantly turned her down because she kept brushing her pendulous breasts against him and giving him lascivious looks. Not safe to go to her house. It occurred to him that he could have agreed to it, collected the money and then sent Joyce to do the work. Ah well, too late.

  The biggest disaster was the Manila trip. First, the client had died, so there was going to be no hope of follow-up visits. Second, Wong had spent the best part of three days working long hours in the offices of the Philippine Daily Sun and been paid nothing at all for it. He should have insisted on full payment in advance.

  As he compared his earnings with the days spent working, he found that the disappointing Manila trip was partly compensated for by extra profits earned in Thailand. He had received a fat tip after finishing his official assignment of redoing the dressing room, and another one after the unofficial job—solving the mystery of the missing actors.

  The India trip had produced no extra fees, but had been worth it for another reason. His visit to the home of Mag-Auntie outside Pallakiri had powerfully brought home to him the similarities between feng shui and vaastu. Until then, he had always been slightly disdainful of Indian geomantic arts, considering them to be more superstition than science.

  But that glade! It was so perfect, so paradisiacal, so much the archetype of the original Pure Land of Zen. Truly it proved that the human mind all over the world was programmed to react positively to a home with ideal geomantic conditions. Mag-Auntie had given him the address of her vaastu master, a man called Mistry, and he was already planning another trip to India for the purposes of visiting him.