by Ning Cai
CK swears out loud. But nobody hears because everyone around us is singing.
A chubby middle-aged lady in a white T-shirt and tight yoga pants with prints of cat faces is dancing right in front of me. Cat Lady suddenly spins around, falling to her knees with a hysterical scream in the middle of praise. She flicks her limp, greasy hair from side to side, and starts speaking in a garbled, rapid incomprehensible language that progressively gets louder and louder.
Beside her, a wheelchair-bound man unexpectedly starts to stand up with his arms held out wide in worship. The crowd standing near him goes ecstatic at this amazing “miracle” and starts cheering even harder as he begins to dance and clap to the beat of the loud rock music, no longer needing his shiny wheelchair. I briefly wonder what Dr Aisha would say if she were here to experience this moment with us.
The worship service feels like a concert: a band of musicians channel their inner rock stars on stage, shouting praises to God, as a professional camera crane sweeps down, filming the cheering crowd as everyone screams and waves, thrilled at seeing themselves on the giant screens. The crazy high energy bouncing around the great hall gets me thinking of Bacchus, the ancient Roman god of merriment, but I am brought back to reality when Cat Lady starts thrashing on the floor like a beached whale suffering a severe epileptic shock.
On stage, a plump man with gravity-defying hair is leading the worship session. Sporting white designer sneakers with glittering diamanté and what looks like a leather jacket that a teenager would need to sell both kidneys on the black market to buy, he suddenly stops his dance shuffle. Microphone in hand, he dramatically throws his head back, shouting praises to God. The crowd around us hushes just as the musicians take his cue to stop, and technicians ready the gigantic television screens all around.
“152-inch ultra-high-definition plasma screens? These cost a fortune,” CK whispers.
Pastor Lenny Lye’s face flashes on screen and his followers go nuts. Their jubilant cheers and excited screams grow even louder, so loud that CK and I jam our fingers inside our ears to keep from going deaf.
With one arm raised high and his index finger pointing to the sky, the stocky man on stage starts shouting into his microphone, as though he has secret aspirations of being a WWE emcee. “Give it up for the man…the one true leader… whom the Holy Spirit specially entrusted the keys…to the gates of the Kingdom of our Lord God…the anointed one chosen by Jesus Christ to lead us sinners unto Salvation…the founder of our church…our very own…Pastor Lenny Lye!”
On the massive screens, Lenny dramatically arches an eyebrow and his white flock immediately hushes up. Every single supplicant looks up to the giant Botoxed face of their religious leader with deep, unmistakable adoration. Breaking into a smile, the charismatic man stares into the camera. His deep, velvety voice sounds clearly throughout the hall, reaching every single person, reverberating warmly like a heartbeat in the chest.
“My children.”
SEVEN
CHURCH SERVICE IS over and the band is packing up on stage. The worship leader with wild, spiked hair, defying gravity as though he just touched a live wire, is chatting with a gorgeous young lady who looks like Chloe Bennet from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. In other words, totally hot and way out of his league. As we approach them, I recognise her as one of the backup singers. She repeatedly touches her dyed blonde hair and giggles as she refers to him as their “youth pastor”, and I roll my eyes at hearing the man promise to give her a solo next week.
“Hello, excuse me.” Ashraf clears his throat to interrupt when it becomes apparent that the two are completely oblivious to our presence. “We need to speak with your pastor, Lenny Lye.”
“Ah, they’re looking for Daddy.” The attractive girl shyly acknowledges us, sashaying away in her four-inch heels after miming for the youth pastor to call her later.
After watching her short white skirt swish as she leaves, the youth pastor turns to face us. I catch a look of annoyance in his beady eyes but it disappears in a quick flicker, replaced by a phony smile that reminds me too much of cheesy late-night infomercial actors. He clasps his chubby hands together, making a well-practised bow. “Yes, how may I help you?”
In unison, both CID inspectors flash him their official police badges. His eyes go wide. “Y-you’re from CPIB?”
Obviously the man was incapable of reading, because Uncle Glen and Ashraf aren’t with the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau. But we don’t see a need to correct him. Instead, Uncle Glen nods his unshaven face towards the large wall poster of the church founder in a sharp white tuxedo. “Your boss. We need to speak with him.”
“Uh…” The youth pastor fidgets, looking around before coming to the realisation that everyone else has left the stage. He is alone and the lights are slowly starting to dim.
“Right now,” Uncle Glen stresses. “Please.”
Ashraf crosses his burly arms, his muscles helping put the point across.
“Yes, right, of course,” the short man splutters. “Follow me, this way.”
He leads us through the interior maze of the large church complex. We finally come to a stop in front of double doors, which have Pastor Lenny’s name embossed in golden fancy script. The man hesitates before bringing his fist up to rap on the dark mahogany.
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes!” the grumpy voice of an old lady shrills loudly from inside. “The door’s not locked. Come in!” We exchange looks among ourselves. That isn’t Lenny Lye.
Pushing open the heavy doors, the youth pastor enters the room and we follow him inside. A thin, elderly woman sits in a leather chair behind the large office desk decorated with the pastor’s name. She wears a sour expression, as if she had been sucking on a slice of lemon, and stares at us with narrowed eyes like we are unwelcome vermin. Her salt-and-pepper fringe, cut in a severe line above her chestnut-coloured, pencilled eyebrows, accentuate the unfriendliness of her bright red lips as they twist into a sneer.
“Who are you people?” she demands, fingers tugging on the string of pearls around her wrinkled neck as she slowly stands, her stooped back crooked like she suffers from scoliosis. “Titus, why on earth did you bring these people in here?”
As she totters towards us in her conservative white silk dress, I recognise her from the huge wall banner outside the church. The real person standing in front of us is nothing like the friendly, welcoming motherly figure featured in the poster. She looks like a deeply unhappy woman despite the glittery jewellery adorning her neck and age-spotted fingers.
“Sorry, Mrs Lye. But CPIB is looking for Daddy,” the youth pastor says, and bows his head like a schoolboy being disciplined. She dismisses him with a surly flick of her wrist and the chubby young man scurries out, closing the door behind him.
Mrs Lye makes a noise of great displeasure in her throat as she turns to look at us, holding her chin high. Ashraf tries to speak but she cuts him off immediately with another flick of her wrist.
“C. P. I. B.” Disdain drips from her voice as she studies us with a haughty gaze. “What do you people want, coming in here again? Didn’t the auditors already—”
“There’s been a slight misunderstanding.” Uncle Glen steps forward, presenting his card. “I’m Inspector Glen Chang and this is Inspector Ashraf Sabah. We’re actually from the Criminal Investigations Department; CID, not CPIB. And we’re looking for Pastor Lenny Lye. I gather you’re his wife but earlier, that man, is he your son? He called the pastor ‘Daddy’.”
She snorts, but takes his business card anyway.
“Titus? Good heavens, no. My husband makes everyone in church call him ‘Daddy’. And they all do. I wish I could be of help to you, but unfortunately I don’t know where he is.”
“Mrs Lye.” Ashraf clasps his hands earnestly. “Please. Your husband can help us with a very important case we’re in the midst of investigating right now. All we need is just a quick word with him. You can help us save lives.”
Her hard gaze softens and s
he turns away, slowly heading back to the leather armchair that looks much too large for her. “Lennard isn’t here. I haven’t seen him in five days. He isn’t picking up my calls. And apparently he told our son that he’s taking a break from me, from church, from everything. We don’t really talk any more.”
“Wait, hang on.” I scratch my head. “Didn’t we just see Pastor Lenny earlier?”
“Yeah,” CK says, frowning. “Giving his long sermon on all those huge screens!”
“A video playback,” Mrs Lye scoffs bitterly. “I must confess that I’m quite surprised no one remembers it from that recording we did of an event from two years ago.”
CK and I exchange looks, trying hard not to judge. Mrs Lye narrows her eyes at us.
“This stays between us. Not a word to the public. It would be a PR disaster.”
“Of course.” Uncle Glen nods. “Would anyone else know your husband’s whereabouts?”
“Lennard’s most likely with that useless brother of his. He’s always giving away our hard-earned money to that imbecile.” She sighs as she sits down. “Thirty-nine years together, working hard to build our church into the wonderful success that it is today, and now Lennard says that he’s got plans to go somewhere far away where he won’t be disturbed. He wants a life without me, he says. I’m a burden he wants to be free from, he told me. And the man abandoned us, after everything my parents gave him.”
She looks up at the family portrait hanging on the wall beside her, and I follow her gaze. The handsome pastor stands smiling with his arms wrapped lovingly around a much younger version of Mrs Lye and their grinning little boy, who has an interesting mix of both their features.
“Mother!”
The doors behind us burst open and a young man with the chiselled face of a leading actor strides into the office, throwing us a frosty stare as he joins her side. He points to the exit, where the milquetoast Titus stands squirming. “You people need to leave now. My cousin will escort you out. If you refuse to leave, we’re calling security.”
“Marty, Marty, darling, it’s fine.” Mrs Lye takes her son’s arm and I notice the shiny Music Director badge pinned on his white Armani jacket. She pats his broad shoulder. “Be a dear now, and give these people your uncle’s contact details. They’re looking to speak with your father about some urgent matters.”
“But Father doesn’t like to be disturbed!” He turns to face us and I see that Lye junior clearly has his father’s same sharp nose and his mother’s bent back. “What is this about?”
“Sorry.” Ashraf smiles politely, straightening his back and rising to his full height as he puts his hands on his hips. “It’s confidential police business.”
“Martinus Lye,” his irate mother says and pushes a pen and Post-It pad into his hands. “Just write down his shop address. Maybe that clown can be helpful for once.”
The pastor’s son grudgingly does as he is told, tossing his scribble on the polished desk.
“Thank you.” Ashraf smiles brightly as he pockets the address. “And don’t worry. We’ll see ourselves out. God bless you.”
*
“A magic shop?” CK makes a face. “Really?”
He taps the busy screen of his amazing Apple Watch, which comes with a sporty chevron strap. Exiting Google Maps, the display now features a grinning Mickey Mouse pointing his arms in different directions to show us the time. And according to the world’s most famous mouse, it is just a little past noon.
We step into Katong Shopping Centre at Mountbatten Road. Right away, it feels as if we were teleported into a different time. The entire tired-looking building looks like a decaying relic, especially with its faded lime-green and mandarin-orange tiles. Built before even my parents were born, the place has a peculiar air of stale mustiness to it. The people there seem to belong to two distinct segments of society: foreign workers from various parts of Southeast Asia enjoying their well-deserved day off, and elderly Singaporeans with electric wheelchairs and walking aids who look older than God. Both camps openly eye us with unmasked curiosity as we make our way to the barely legible address scribbled on the yellow Post-It.
“So how does a traditional brick-and-mortar shop selling old-school magic tricks and novelties survive in the world today, with online shopping and instant video downloads?” CK muses. “Plus, people are always exposing magic secrets on social media, just cos they can. I grew up watching reruns of Breaking the Magician’s Code, and always thought the TV show was so lame.”
“And there’s also Netflix,” I add, remembering what Jon said in the hospital about the supposedly popular streaming entertainment service. “Netflix and chill.”
CK coughs, smiles and then nods sagely. “Yeah. Uh huh. Exactly. For sure. Netflix and chill would definitely keep people very busy.”
I beam at my best friend as the two police inspectors clear their throats. CK and I continue to follow them.
For some strange reason, the shop units are not in typical sequential order, forcing us to walk past rows and rows of shops in the claustrophobic maze that is Katong Shopping Centre. Every soft footstep I make in the faded corridors allows a glimpse of a different life and the poetic insight touches me. This is a different side of my country, one which I was not aware of. And I have a sneaking suspicion that the people running the shops are likely the original tenants from when the place opened in the early 1970s.
There are old textile businesses run by snowy-haired shop owners with generous speckles of liver spots, listening to old Shanghainese tunes on their crackling AM/FM transistor radios; empty print shops with hearing-aid-fitted proprietors rustling their crisp Chinese newspapers in their wrinkled hands, catching up on the latest tabloid news while their ageing photocopy machines sit dormant next to them; depressing maid agencies filled with domestic helpers wearing ugly orange polo shirts, perched despondently on cheap plastic stools like present-day slaves waiting for new masters. There is a strong smell of burning joss sticks and Chinese medicine within the stuffy, air-conditioned space. I shove my hands deep into the pockets of my jeans, sidestepping a sizeable crack in the floor that might have been made by an anvil falling from a great height.
“Just a thought,” I say, “but maybe this place is why Mrs Lye mentioned her husband is always lending his brother money. It’s not exactly where the cool kids would want to hang out.”
CK shrugs. “Cool kids don’t like magic. Honestly, with the Internet and tech like VR, it’s only little children who still believe magic is real.”
His father suddenly stops in mid-stride, and this causes CK and I to crash right into him. Spinning around, Uncle Glen faces us with an unexpected sparkle in his eyes, which makes him look a lot younger. With mischievous flair, he shows us his empty hand before reaching out to elegantly pluck his CID business card out from thin air. And then with a magical wave of his hand and a sudden flourish, the card vanishes from the very tips of his fingers. Before anyone can say a word, Uncle Glen makes another fluid gesture and the card comes back.
“Ta-da!” Uncle Glen shouts and gives us a hearty wink like a Las Vegas magician stuck in the past, and I can almost imagine him wearing shiny gold sequins and a matching top hat. He strikes a cheesy superhero pose: chin up to the side, legs apart and hands placed dramatically on the hips. The fan mounted on the wall next to us oscillates in his direction, ruffling his unkempt shaggy hair and rippling his crumpled, long-sleeved shirt for effect. Talk about perfect timing.
CK and I exchange perturbed looks, unsure if we should say something. Ashraf laughs good-naturedly and gives a slow clap. “Look out, David Copperfield, you’ve got some serious competition. Not bad lah, bro, not bad. But right now, it’s time to meet the real magician.” Smiling, Ashraf jerks his thumb behind him.
Peeking around the burly policeman, I see a surprisingly busy traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture clinic, with a small red-and-gold Taoist prayer altar by its main door. Three joss sticks stand burning in the ashy bronze urn on the floor
and send smouldering wisps of incense into the air. Right next to the TCM clinic is a dingy, dimly-lit shop that anyone looking in from the outside would have assumed is permanently out of business, if not for the cracked plastic Open sign hanging on the other side of its grimy glass door. We have finally found The Little Magic Shop.
A bell chimes softly as we enter. Narrow, dank and dusty, the shop exudes the vibe of a quirky caravan full of useless oddities, showcasing retro Whoopee cushions, squawking rubber chickens, and the usual magic tricks everyone’s great grandfathers saw in their youth, like the old-school money printing “machine” and the classic finger chopper board. A dusty security camera blinks its red light above a set of cobwebbed Chinese linking rings on display, and feels like an unnecessary security feature since everything in the store is pretty much cheap junk. Stepping farther in, we hear the distinct voices of two people engaged in conversation, coming from behind a curtain on the other side of the counter.
The first voice sounds familiar, its timbre of upper-class arrogance clearly unmistakable. “Yes, you were absolutely right, Eddie. I should have listened to you years ago. I should have left that no-good woman a long time ago. Life would have been so much better. For all of us. You and I, we could have made such a difference to the world with our dreams, my dear brother.”
“P-please d-don’t b-b-blame yourself,” a different man replies in a gentle, kindly voice. “You d-did your b-best.”
“Those dreams we had since we were young men, Eddie! We could have both been famous. We were so good. I still remember that feeling on stage after we closed our illusion shows. It really was magic. But it’s all too late now. Look at us, old and grey. All those wasted years. So many regrets—”
“Hello? So sorry to interrupt,” Ashraf calls out as we walk closer.
The curtain to the back room jerks open abruptly, revealing a frail old man holding an iPhone model similar to mine, genuine surprise written all over his bespectacled face that customers have appeared in his tiny shop. Squinting hard in the dim light, I realise how different the two brothers actually are. The elderly man in front of us is hunched over like a prawn, dressed humbly and looking his age, in complete contrast to the flamboyant, well-groomed celebrity pastor.